It seems Ken Dryden is something of a burger aficionado. As it happens, the only place to get his seal of approval is Bartley’s in Cambridge, Mass. Having myself lived just down the street from Bartley’s, just outside of Harvard Square, for many years, I can attest to Dryden’s good taste. Indeed, Mr Bartley makes a mean burger. But, oh boy, they are fattening.

New poll out that shows that just 32% back Prime Minister Harper on his Middle East stance. Canadians, it would seem, prefer to play a neutral position rather than simply play second fiddle to U.S. President George W. Bush. It gets worse for Harper in Quebec, where just 17% back his position. Only 19% think that Harper’s decision to back Israel was made out of principle, while 53% think it was to get in line with Bush. That number goes up to 72% in Quebec. An earlier poll also put opposition to the Afghanistan mission at 56%. Mr Harper will have to tread lightly.

Overall support is not much different than it has been for a while: 38% for the Tories, 29% for the Liberals, 15% for the NDP, although it should be noted that Ipsos-Reid polls tend to skew a couple points towards the Tories.

Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy today asked Stephen Harper to stop profiteering off of the current misery in Lebanon and Israel.

“Dear Prime Minister:

Sincerely,
Gerard Kennedy
Liberal Leadership Candidate, 2006″

This is a test of Harper’s leadership. Given the ruthless control he has over his party members, Harper cannot escape being tarnished as a war-profiteer if he continues to stand by as his party attempts to politicize the Middle East crisis for partisan purposes. He cannot plead ignorance. He cannot say that he doesn’t have the authority to stop organizers.

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FYI…

Lebanon’s biggest environmental catastrophy: 15,000 ton oil spill hits coast
Wael Hmaidan, Electronic Lebanon, 28 July 2006

(Zena el-Khalil)

“The escalating Israeli attack on Lebanon is not only killing its civilians and destroying its infrastructure, but it is also annihilating its environment. Last week a 15,000 ton oil spill resulted from the Israeli air raid on the Jiyyeh power plant South of Lebanon. The power plant has six fuel tanks. Four of them have burned completely, while the fifth one, which is also the main cause of the spill, is still burning. The Lebanese Ministry of Environment is worried that the sixth tank, which is underground and so far intact, is going to explode and increase the magnitude of the problem.

Lebanese environmental NGOs have labeled the spill as the worst environmental crisis in Lebanon’s history. Just for the sake of comparison, in 2003 a 50 ton oil spill in the North by a cement company was a huge blow to the Lebanese coastal environment, and required a years clean up effort. The current spill is 300 times bigger, and there is a big possibility that more oil will go into the sea.”

Ontario Needs a Mixed-Member Parliament
By Gregory D. Morrow

Ontario’s Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform is currently looking at ways of improving the way we translate votes into seats. One of the biggest complaints that people outside of the GTA have is the Ontario is dominated by Toronto. Indeed, when the legislature is comprised of only local seats, then regions with many local seats bunched together tend to have the advantage. But, if we introduced the idea of regional seats into parliament, then suddenly there is a mechanism for all regions to leverage their weight. What if the Northern Ontario or Eastern Ontario was a region that each had, say, 5 regional MPs in addition to local MPs? Suddenly Northern Ontario and Eastern Ontario is a voting bloc with more power than if parliament was comprised of only local members. Instead of each individual MP advocating only for their few blocks, town, or city, a mixed-member system would allow more regional concerns to be expressed more powerfully. Suddenly, instead of fighting for money just to fix the local bridge, the Northern Ontario regional and local MPs could fight for long-term economic development strategies.

This is just one of the fantastic features of a mixed-member parliament — one that combines the majority of local members (say, two-thirds) with a minority of regional members (one-thirds). Critics of mixed-member systems claim that it reinforces the party system. But, it is no different than it is currently, where candidates must be elected by party members in order to stand for election. With a mixed system, this is the same — only in addition to local candidates, party members nominate regional members as well. With a given region, say, Eastern Ontario, each party would nominate a slate of 5 members, and depending on how many people vote for that party, anywhere from 0 to all 5 of those could be elected. There is little difference, especially in a system that gives voters a choice of who their regional representative will be. The system delivers what voters have been asking for — the option of voting for a local person they like and voting for a party they like (or candidate, if they so choose), giving people the option of splitting their ballot.

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TÉLÉCHARGER / DOWNLOAD PDF	25 JUILLET / JULY 2006
	PQ	PLQ	ADQ	OTH
%	37,0%	38,0%	18,0%	7,0%
SIÈGES / SEATS	65	49	11	0
2003 ELECTION	45	76	4	0

(English to follow)

La couverture des élections générales québécoises (possiblement en 2007) par DemocraticSpace, est maintenant disponible! Naviguez sur cette page pour plus d’information ou cliquez sur le lien suivant (que vous pouvez enregistrer dans votre listes des favoris!) :

Le Parti québécois a pris l’avance dans la répartition des sièges. Bien que le PQ et le PLQ sont au coude à coude dans les sondages (égalité statistique à 37 et 38 %), l’appui populaire que récolte l’ADQ favorise présentement le PQ (Note : cette prévision ne tient pas compte des variations et particularités régionales – ces éléments seront ajoutés dans les semaines à venir, ce qui aura pour effet d’accroître le réalisme des prévisions).

(Translation provided by Vincent Robidas. Our thanks go out to him.)

***

DemocraticSPACE’s coverage of the Quebec election (likely in 2007) is now available! See above navigation or go click (and bookmark)

The early edge goes to the PQ. Current polling puts the PQ and PLQ is a dead-heat at the 37-38% range. However, given the splits with the ADQ, this favours the PQ (Note: this early projection is a “straight-line” projection, i.e. it does not yet take into account regional variation — this will be incorporated into the model over the coming weeks, which will increase the reliability of the projections).

Terrorism is the Symptom, Poverty is the Root Cause
By Gregory D. Morrow

Terrorist acts are those of desperate people who have lost their morals, creating a context in which killing random people is justified in the name of resistance. But no terrorist act is justified, regardless of how unjust the underlying causes that motivate those that perpetuate them.

That being said, many people flat-out refuse to accept that anything other than insanity and innate evil motivates terrorists to commit their horrible deeds. Many people don’t want to accept there might be underlying causes as to why terrorists have become so desperate as to kill innocent people. To do so, they feel, would be to lend credibility to their actions. This is understandable. But, unless we accept that people who go to such extremes are not simply insane or born into this world as evil, unless we try to understand why they are so angry, we will never defeat terrorism. Terrorism is hate translated into violent action. There are short-term battles that are necessary to fight in order to quell the immediate dangers posed by terrorists, and perhaps the current Israeli-Lebanese conflict is just that, but in the long-term, we must identify and solve the root-cause that motivates such anger.

The United States, Canada, and Israel, among others, believe that Hezbollah’s terrorist acts are the “root cause” of the current hostilities. Indeed, there is little doubt that the latest round of violence began with Hezbollah’s attack on an Israeli convoy, which lead to the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Both Hezbollah and Israel, however, are carelessly killing civilians, although to be sure Israel is not purposely targeting civilians, while Hezbollah is (a difference that leads people to call Hezbollah’s attacks terrorism).

But terrorism is just the symptom of an underlying problem, not the root cause. I would argue that poverty is the root cause of violence between Israel, Shi’a Muslims (as represented by Hezbollah), and Sunni Muslims (as represented by Hamas). Hezbollah and Hamas have been successful at recruiting supporters because they wrap their promises in a nationalist agenda infused with religion, and can point to the vast differences in quality of life between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle East as evidence of what they believe is a war against their faith.

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I wonder what kind of reward Stephen Taylor is getting from the PMO for his uncritical assessment of recent events, claiming — and I laughed out loud when I read it — that “it seems that every time [Harper] goes overseas, his hero-factor goes up,” a sad attempt to show the “Harper cares about Lebanese-Canadian people”.

Taylor does not even entertain the possibility that, as many on the ground have said, the PMO has impeded the evacuation (by not allowing people in Lebanon to do their job, and by diverting resources to organize Harper’s Cyprus “hero” visit); instead, he points the finger at the usual suspects — the NDP for its opposition to military investments and, everybody’s favourite scapegoat, the Liberals, because of, you guessed it, “13 years of Liberal mismanagement and neglect.” Taylor! The Tories are in government now. Opposition rhetoric doesn’t fly when the buck stops with you. Quit making excuses - you wanted to be in charge. Now act like it and take responsibility. Sure, there are reasonable reasons for the delay, but some are failures of government and leadership (why were our chartered ships detained several times by Israeli ships? the failed communication between Canadian and Israeli officials played a role here). France and Sweden chartered ships far faster, and got their citizens out of harm’s way far sooner, without having to make excuses.

While Taylor is not alone, this kind of empty noise represents the worst of the blogosphere — indeed, if blogs cannot do anything other than uncritically trumpet their partisan rhetoric then it’s a communication vehicle soon to be replaced with more credible analysis. Taylor is not always so mindlessly partisan, but this post struck me as vapid.

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So George W. Bush decided to use his first veto in 5-1/2 years to kill a bill that would ease restrictions on the use of stem cells for scientific research. Apparently when God and Science clash in America, God wins. I’m sure the Christian Right feels quite strongly about it, and have convinced their troops that it is tantamount to killing babies. But, if we all held that position, shouldn’t we also ban contraceptives too? Where does it stop? Basically, what the White House is saying is that the medical community is immoral and cannot be trusted to enforce ethical practice.

Most distressing, this is a failure of democracy. A Republican-controlled House and Senate passed the bill. According to Harris Interactive, in 2001, 61% of American said stem cell research should be allowed and 21% say said it shouldn’t, a 3-to-1 margin. By 2004, 73% approved, 11% didn’t, a 6-to-1 margin. And while religion impacts the numbers, Harris concludes that “clear majorities of all religious groups we analyzed favor stem cell research”.

So why did the President veto the bill? Because, with his approval rating at dismal levels, George W. Bush needed to rally his base. And so the American scientific research community loses. No worries - the rest of the world will make the advances, and America will catch up when the Presidency isn’t hijacked by the extreme right.