What happened to Canada?
right-wing
It's time to hold Harper to account
About this dismal business of federal politics. The way I figure it, we're waiting for the Harper government to finally shoot itself in the head after shooting itself in the foot roughly every three months. We're also waiting for the Opposition Liberal party, which is already dead on the floor, to show signs of life.
Harper's Fox News luncheon
My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.
So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.
It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.
Europe looks ahead
British Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has come out in favour of a global financial transactions tax. Speaking Saturday in Edinburgh (his home base) to a G20 Finance Ministers meeting on the subject of bank bailouts Brown said "it cannot be acceptable that the benefits of success in this sector are reaped by the few but the costs of its failure are borne by all of us."
Peter Worthington and the blurry divisions between left and right
I'll miss Peter Worthington, Canada's archetypal right-wing journalist, who died this week at 86. I say that without irony or subtext. I'll just miss him. When we did public events together we were always positioned as left vs. right. But I couldn't conceal my delight at seeing him. CBC's Michael Enright, who hosted one panel, said: "Would you two stop acting like long-lost brothers?"
Anti-choice failures are no reason to give them an inch
This month, Canada's Parliament will vote on whether to re-open the thorny issue that has bedeviled philosophers and theologians for over two millennia: Are women human beings?
François Hollande's Socialist France
Masses of people thronged Place de la Bastille -- symbolically representative of the French revolution -- to cheer the electoral victory May 6 of French Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, over conservative incumbent President of the Republic Nicholas Sarkozy.
The joyful celebratory mood was a welcome change. Over a decade of grim employment news had brought a measure of despondency to the nation once noted for its "joie de vivre." On the campaign trail, Hollande was called the only happy person in a morose country.
Europe counts in French elections
The biggest smile, the night of the first round of the French presidential elections, belonged to Marine Le Pen, candidate of the extreme right Front National (FN) who obtained 17.9 per cent of the vote, a record for the party formerly led by her father.