tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754Wed, 07 May 2008 01:00:42 +0000http://www.jameslaxer.com/blog.htmlJames LaxerBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3794511715131928453Tue, 06 May 2008 03:02:00 +00002008-05-05T23:18:54.428-04:00 Hillary Clinton has been chastised by many including the editorial page of the New York Times for saying that if Iran attacked Israel "we could totally obliterate them." Her comment on Iran, which she refuses to retract, has been explained by some as the desperate effort of a losing candidate to fall back on populist hyperbole to defeat her opponent. Chastising and explaining are not enough. http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/05/what-it-means-when-hillary-clinton-says.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-4131071394310521709Fri, 02 May 2008 18:50:00 +00002008-05-02T14:53:49.784-04:00The United States faces a severe energy crisis that is compounding its broader economic and military predicaments. The highly visible tip of the energy crisis can be seen at the gas pumps where Americans are paying an average of $3.60 a gallon for regular gas this week. On the campaign trail, Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama have been debating the 18.4 cent a gallon federal http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/05/americas-energy-crisis-realities.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-1090354751135423225Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:51:00 +00002008-04-28T15:52:48.266-04:00The way the mainstream media has told the story, all is well in Toronto in the aftermath of the passage of legislation in the Ontario Legislature ordering the employees of the Toronto Transit Commission back to work. The subways, buses and streetcars are running and that's all that matters. Something is very wrong with this picture. Fundamental issues are at stake here and they cuthttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/04/ttc-workers-and-right-to-strike.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-5347463147411067626Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:54:00 +00002008-04-26T19:55:04.762-04:00Without acknowledging it, the three remaining major party candidates for the presidency are debating that oldest of imperial questions----how to keep the American Empire within manageable limits. The empire is severely overstretched, as a consequence of the massive incompetence of the Bush administration. Militarily, the empire is embroiled in two wars with no end in sight, in Afghanistan and http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/04/mccain-clinton-and-obama-debating.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3658799317517254435Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:20:00 +00002008-04-09T12:21:29.643-04:00Menton, France: As a consequence of the Canadian media coverage and the fulsome claims of Stephen Harper, Canadians could be forgiven for thinking that Canada got its way at the recent NATO summit in Rumania. It is understandable that many now are convinced that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to send an extra battalion of troops to Afghanistan was in response to Canada’s insistencehttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/04/sarkozy-rides-to-rescue-in-afghanistan.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3630239717536727479Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:54:00 +00002008-03-22T12:55:16.925-04:00(Inspiration for doing this post comes from my good friend Ish Theilheimer at Sraightgoods.ca. If you’re not familiar with this excellent source of news and analysis, you should log on.) Not that I enjoy thinking the unthinkable or that I believe that the Harper Conservatives are necessarily headed for a majority in the next election, but I do hold the view that it is salutary to face the worst http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/03/what-would-harper-majority-government.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-5727947456854831044Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:01:00 +00002008-03-10T12:03:01.033-04:00Menton, France: Last spring, when he cruised to victory in the French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy was being hailed as the Margaret Thatcher of France, the leader who would tame wage and salary earners. He would tempt them away from their preference for early retirement, the thirty-five hour work week, and strong job security. He would bring “flexibility” to France, a term which http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/03/trouble-with-sarkozy.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3841314357239331904Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:32:00 +00002008-03-04T05:33:14.691-05:00Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been squabbling over which of them is more serious about standing up to Canada on the shortcomings of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In her last ditch effort to seize victory from the jaws of defeat in Ohio (we’ll know the result tonight), Clinton has been accusing Obama of talking tough to hard hit workers while reassuring Ottawa that he’s only http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/03/obama-and-clinton-have-point-lets-take.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-7874687436927909204Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:05:00 +00002008-02-25T13:06:41.549-05:00Last week, General Rick Hillier, the Chief of the Defence Staff, stepped out of his role as a military officer to make two astonishing assertions. He made it clear that it’s up to the soldiers, not the politicians, to define the nature of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. "Without the pro-active operations necessary to precisely track them [the Taliban], locate them and attack them, they, with http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/02/if-general-hillier-wants-to-be.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-1687027070873616949Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:35:00 +00002008-02-15T17:36:30.562-05:00The Liberals have made a fateful choice in their attempt to de-politicize the issue of Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan. Liberal leader Stephane Dion has made himself look very foolish by espousing two hopelessly conflicting notions. He claims that the Liberals are sticking to their insistence that Canada must end its combat mission in Kandahar by 2009, while conceding thathttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/02/dion-takes-dive-on-afghanistan.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3319949776209267795Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:42:00 +00002008-02-07T07:44:49.856-05:00Stephen Harper has tied himself to the Manley Report on Afghanistan, and is prepared to wager the survival of his government on it. Fine. It’s time Canadians had a real debate on the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan, and the hustings is the best place for it. Harper is determined to extend Canada’s military commitment in Kandahar beyond 2009. To make himself look tough, http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/02/if-harper-wants-election-on-afghanistan.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-2384983554333777051Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:14:00 +00002008-01-29T10:16:17.908-05:00Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany 75 years ago this Wednesday. During the 12 years that the Hitler regime endured, from 1933 to 1945, January 30 was the most revered date in the Nazi calendar. The Nazis saw January 30 as the day their National Revolution began. Hitler boasted that his Third Reich would last a thousand years and that it would place the German super-race in http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/01/hitlers-accession-to-power-75-years-ago.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-161103557160853988Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:15:00 +00002008-01-23T11:16:41.510-05:00To understand the Manley Report, you need to take a map of Washington D.C. and one of Brussels (where NATO headquarters is located), and to superimpose these on top of the map of Afghanistan, the country which is supposedly the subject of the Report. The utterly pedestrian character of the Report is that it never escapes from the illusion that all political and military reality http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/01/manley-report-should-be-called-ostrich.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-4504386045638419285Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:28:00 +00002008-01-22T04:30:21.152-05:00The current global economic crisis has a number of immediate causes, among them the bursting of the housing and real estate bubble in the United States. The bursting of this bubble has sent shock waves throughout the financial systems of the world and will certainly result in a fall in real estate prices around the world. But there is more to the current crisis than that. What is http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/01/global-economic-crisis-outgrowth-of.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-5884118025074361052Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:46:00 +00002008-01-06T16:47:34.550-05:00Not since John F. Kennedy burst onto the stage of U.S. presidential politics in 1960 has there been a candidate who could match the excitement and hope for the future that has been generated by Barack Obama. The Illinois Senator’s convincing victory in the Iowa Democratic caucuses has seemingly transformed the calculus of American politics. What was unthinkable---the election of anhttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/01/barack-obama-is-real-thing-but-real.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-3695963929773257694Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:08:00 +00002008-01-02T17:09:06.466-05:00Those who wield power in the inner realms of the American state and in the elite circles of the American political class have greater access to information and raw intelligence than any comparable cohort of rulers in human history. What they lack, though, is judgment and perspective, and that renders all the mountains of information at their disposal next to useless. Gathering intelligence, http://www.jameslaxer.com/2008/01/intelligence-ideology-and-empire.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-2673740228513345518Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:51:00 +00002007-12-24T11:54:48.226-05:00On August 29, 2007, I filled out the necessary forms and sent cheques for five dollars each to the Privy Council Office, the Department of National Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Canadian International Development Agency to request copies of documents under the terms of the Access to Information Act. The documents I was seeking concerned communications planning relatedhttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/12/ive-been-waiting-for-four-months-for.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-2455571474252834964Sat, 08 Dec 2007 23:18:00 +00002007-12-09T16:46:05.379-05:00There are many Canadians whose interest in the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair does not extend beyond the delicious anticipation of watching the 18th prime minister of Canada explain to a Parliamentary Committee why he accepted bags of cash which he took some time to declare as income. The affair does have a much deeper importance, though, which is rooted in the way key decisions were made in Canada http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/12/how-mulroney-schreiber-affair-really.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-5926581212223036847Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:00:00 +00002007-12-01T12:01:25.131-05:00The position of the Harper government on climate change, unveiled before the world at the recent Commonwealth Conference in Kampala, and ready for use in Bali at the upcoming global summit on climate change is as follows: the advanced countries should not commit themselves to hard targets for greenhouse gas emissions until the major developing countries adopt hard targets. In other words, Canadahttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/12/harperites-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-4918068480987701918Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:51:00 +00002007-11-24T15:52:35.897-05:00It is not often that an emperor’s clothes are torn from him in full public view, but that is precisely what happened to Stephen Harper at the Commonwealth summit in Kampala. On the crucial issue of climate change, Harper had one ally when he arrived in Uganda, the right-wing government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Alone among the fifty-three countries at the conclave, Canada andhttp://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/11/stephen-harpers-environmental-bridge-to.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-7662152363937007895Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:02:00 +00002007-11-18T15:03:45.572-05:00The evidence mounts that the Harper government’s political strategy is to turn Ontario into the whipping boy of Confederation. On a host of issues, the government is steering a course that blatantly negates the interests of Ontario. The most obvious case in point is the government’s bill to add twenty-two additional seats to the House of Commons after the 2011 census. The Harperites would http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/11/ontario-is-harpers-whipping-boy.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-8908884658720536070Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:58:00 +00002007-11-15T11:01:09.352-05:00If hockey is our national sport, political scandal is Canada’s national art form. The Mulroney-Schreiber affair---the coming judicial inquiry and the afternoon delights of foam-flecked exchanges during Question Period---promises much titillation. Like the Sponsorship Scandal, ample rhetoric will be invested in making it seem that this was one of the darkest affairs in the sordid history of http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/11/oh-canada-scandal-and-farce.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-4866820107030152558Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:20:00 +00002007-10-23T15:23:53.804-04:00At a highly publicized meeting on Parliament Hill today, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will exhort the nation’s retailers to bring prices into line with the stronger value of the Canadian dollar. The gathering bears a strong resemblance to a conclave of medieval warlords with the local bishop. From time to time the bishop would meet with knights, lords, knaves and other grandees to urge a http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/10/in-bishops-robes-jim-flaherty-meets.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-6094473305353450858Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:22:00 +00002007-10-18T17:25:17.906-04:00With more than a little interest, I've watched your recent efforts to snare Stephane Dion in a trap that will not allow him any choice but to bring down the government and get the election campaign going. Allowing the cameras into the caucus meeting was a deft touch. The lusty bellowing, while down the hall the Liberals were attired in sack cloth and ashes, drove the point home that you’re http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/10/modest-proposal-addressed-to-harper.htmlJames Laxertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30617754.post-8796318787174889771Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:04:00 +00002007-10-16T09:05:15.034-04:00Later today when the Governor General reads the Speech from the Throne, Stephane Dion and the Liberals should take their cues from a wily Roman general who was in a desperate war with the Carthaginians in 217 B.C. Stephane Dion needs to play Fabius Maximus to Stephen Harper’s Hannibal (the Carthaginian general who led his troops into Italy.) Hannibal wanted to fight a war of annihilation http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/10/dion-needs-to-play-fabius-maximus-to.htmlJames Laxer