Blogs about: Politics

Oh, wowsers: What’s more complicated and controversial than politics? Since the dawn of (relatively) civilized society, we humans have been trying to control each other, either for the common good or personal gain. We’re still working on getting it right, meaning there’s no shortage of hot-button political issues going in the world today, from local city council meetings to debates at the United Nations. The internet, thankfully, has helped level the playing field. It’s now possible to keep tabs on serious issues like government atrocities, the influence of money on politicians, and that all-important topic known as political humor.

Featured Posts
More from this author
Beyond Brangelina: The Supreme Court Decides Myriad Genetics
Living the Whole

source Tomorrow marks one month since actress Angelina Jolie announced to the world that she had undergone a double mastectomy in response to test results indicating a heightened risk for contracting breast and ovarian cancers.  She carries the BRCA1 gene–a mutation that indicates an average 67 percent risk of contracting breast cancer.  In her announcement she bemoans, “It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live.  The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.”  And in a matter of hours, Angelina Jolie made the Myriad Genetics case famous. Myriad Genetics is a “molecular diagnostic company” based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  In the 1990s, Myriad discovered the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations that lead to significantly increased chances of breast and ovarian cancer

More from this author
The Politics of Calling for No Politics
the becoming radical

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (HBO Documentaries, 2013) offers a window into the intersections of music, religion, and politics in the context of Vladimir Putin’s Russia: On Feb. 21, 2012, members of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot, donning their colorful trademark balaclavas, or ski masks, participated in a 40-second “punk prayer protest” on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral before being detained. Arrested and tried for trespassing, wearing “inappropriate” sleeveless dresses and disrupting social order, Nadia, Masha and Katia were accused of religious hatred in a trial that reverberated around the world and transformed the face of Russian society. The Guardian UK: Pussy Riot on Putin, ‘punk prayers’ and superheroes The film ends with two of the three band members still in prison, their unwavering ethical statements expressed in court haunting viewers along with the sometimes shocking and always confrontational performance art detailed in the backgr

The Latest Posts in Politics
Recently posted on WordPress.com Subscribe
Turkey’s New ‘Sunni Islam’ Taboo
The Scavenger Economy

Turkey’s New ‘Sunni Islam’ Taboo (from al-monitor.com source Kadri Gursel:) “The goal of the court decision is not to protect public peace but to build and reinforce a new taboo of this country. This taboo is “Sunni Islam religiosity.” … It is clear, however, that the court’s real concern is to inhibit the debate on religious concepts. In supporting the ruling, the court stresses that the susceptibility of these tweets to disrupt public peace actually incorporates an abstract threat and the court did not have to wait for that threat to become a fact before sentencing. … These expressions are proof that freedom of thought and expression as well as the future of democracy in Turkey is now put on a very perilous path by the judiciary.” Much worse, it opens the shadow of doubt if a muslim brother ran country can be trusted with NATO nuclear weaponry. As long as the Military prevailed over the fanaticism, this could have not been an issue, but a shadow of

I’m ill therefore I am…
AngelicDemonic

I watched a documentary about the national debt, while it made a lot of good points about the welfare state, the ins and outs and politics of money through different channels of society, and the national debt and how everything affected the latter; they still managed to roll out the cliché that if you’re off work and on benefits basically you’re just a lazy do nothing and the state has made it so that being lazy is a way of life to you… Now; mental illness is often one of those areas which is so vast and varied, so unpredictable and in many cases less obvious on the eyeballs, that it is most often judged as people just being lazy and calling it mental illness. I’d like to just say that until I found myself so ill I was incapable of work-I did work and kept on trying to work even while I was ill for several years. Before I left school I had a Saturday job and I went to college and worked weekends, then worked full-time as long as I could until I became too ill to

Mugabe too frail to lead, says Tsvangirai
Zimbabwe Election: Latest News & Voting Information

PRIME MINISTER Morgan Tsvangirai has launched a stinging attack on his 89-year-old election rival, President Robert Mugabe, accusing him of being too frail to run the country. Tsvangirai (61) said in an interview it was unrealistic for Mugabe to continue for five more years and questioned whether he had the energy for the presidential election, due later this year. Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai It was reported last year that Mugabe was suffering from advanced prostate cancer, but Zanu PF party officials have denied this. Asked about the President’s health, Tsvangirai said: “A dead man does not campaign. He’s there – but he’s old and frail. “I think it’s very punishing for the Zimbabwe people to put forward a 90-year-old to run the country for another five years.” And he questioned whether Mugabe’s health was up to such a rigorous campaign. Last week, Mugabe, who has ruled for 33 years, used a presidential decree to set the elect

Online Campaign: How much “Like” Can Move You???
On Da Street
She’s someone
Meizac
Hassan Rowhani blends transparency pleads for nuclear rights 
New Delhi Samachar
Hatter National Tour – Ottawa Edition
Andrew Wade on Life, the Theatre, and Everything
Bernardi shows disgraceful political positioning: Likens same-sex marriage to bestiality
Logic Of Luke
How the Revival of Postwar Germany Began – Bruce Bartlett – NYTimes.com
Dr Alf's Blog
We’ll meet INEC’s registration conditions —APC
Nigeria News

  The opposition All Progressives Congress has expressed confidence that it will meet the registration requirements set by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Opposition political parties involved in the merger spoke in separate telephone interviews with our correspondents in…We’ll meet INEC’s registration conditions —APC

THIS SUNDAY IN SYDNEY: URBAN CONVERSATIONS
Sophia Think Tank

The next Urban Conversations will be in Sydney this coming Sunday.  We will once again be looking at the topic of Crisis in Australian Democracy and Jim Longley will be the Keynote speaker.  The event in Melbourne was very good and we are expecting to buld on that conversation in Sydney this week.  Please come and be a part of that experience.  We would love to have your involvement. All the details can be found here: Hope Talks Flier UC S  We can now announce that the Panel will be made up of Mike Hercock from Imagine, Andrew West from ABC Religion and Ethics, and Andre Van Eymeren from Partnering for Transformation. It will be good to see you there. David Wilson.

83 Percent of All Statistics Are Made Up on the Spot
American Elephants

Climate Scientist Dr. Tim Ball said recently that 83 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. Probably true, as it is becoming established that the computer models proclaimed to predict future climate aren’t predicting anything. A good example is a 2008 report that claimed, Human activity is wiping out close to one percent of every other species on Earth every year, a global environmental report said Friday. What absolute rubbish. They can’t possibly substantiate these claims. We don’t know how many species there are. We don’t have even crude estimates of populations. We don’t know how much population numbers vary. What do they mean by “every other”? They should name all the species that comprise their claims. Numbers in the 2008 Report are part of the ridiculous, completely unscientific claims made originally by E.O. Wilson about species extinction. Self-proclaimed Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki traveled across the country a few years ago claiming the demise of

Liking Our Politicians Likable
Pam Klainer's Day

Bill Clinton is on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek again, offering free advice on the U.S. economy. The Big Dog is everywhere, and people seem to love it. Ken Starr, who has retreated into relative obscurity as a university president making a fraction of what Clinton makes with his post-presidential endeavors, has to be gnashing his teeth. We like our politicians to be likable, and when they are we forgive them a lot. Aside from having policy positions out of favor with a majority of Americans, the Republican Party suffers in the likability game. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham look like ministers from no-smoking, no-drinking, no-dancing, no-sex, and no-fun backwoods churches whose message centers on hellfire and damnation. Paul Ryan is the smarty pants cousin who got his MBA and can’t stop reminding everyone what a genius he is. Rand Paul has the crazy father, and you know it runs in the gene pool. Every time we want to treat Newt Gingrich like a visionary or senior state

After Harper’s comments, Putin cast as pariah at G8 summit
The Scavenger Economy

After Harper’s comments, Putin cast as pariah at G8 summit (source ctvnews.ca from Steve Rennie) “How to persuade Putin to drop his seemingly unshakable support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is the main challenge facing the other leaders at this meeting at the lakeside Lough Erne resort in Northern Ireland. The bloody Syrian conflict has now raged for two years and at least 93,000 people have died.” Well, nobody disputes the interest of Russia in the region, the despicable part is what would Russia do if some places under its direct influence end up with a similar bloodbath ? Would it be not more reasonable Russia itself would facilitate a transition of the Assad family out of there, into a balanced system ? Syria seems to be Iraq in reverse, where again a minority is subduing a majority, a ‘hot spot.’

Chidike Okeem: The Black Conservative Intellectual Civil War
Conservative Calmversation

I’m not going to preface this wonderfully written piece with my thoughts as I normally would. I’ll allow Mr. Okeem’s editorial from Hip Hop Republican to speak for itself: The leftist assessment of the black conservative is that such a person is angered and frustrated at being born black, which leads to the adoption of conservative views in order to compensate for this perceived “congenital deficiency.” While this is a preposterous accusation to make against all black conservatives, it is intellectually dishonest to pretend as though this characterization of the black right came into existence wholly out of left field. Indubitably, there are some black conservatives whose proclamations and behaviors lend credence to the stereotypical leftist view of black conservatives. Black conservatives are not intellectually monolithic, and we certainly do not read from the same script of talking points. Essentially, black conservatives can be divided into two groups: solution-ori

Thinking of attending Georgian College, you may want to reconsider apparently signed contracts are not necessarily meant to be honoured there.
voice from the pack

The PMO thinks contracts should not be honoured and the MP of the area that includes Georgian College agrees. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t do it for free even before he was an MP. He didn’t charge the Liberals to do speeches at their partisan events,” He is also a bit of a dissembler (posh word for liar) “Why charge charities and not-for-profits, especially when they are losing money, based on his professional ability to draw crowds?” It is not the speaker’s responsibility to advertise the event, it’s the organisers. But the truth has never got in the way of a swift jab to the ribs in Harper land. My advice to any prospective students thinking of Georgian College is think hard about if you want to attend an institution that is happy to be part of a Harper dirty tricks campaign that is full of lies and innuendo. Also remember they don’t appear to understand what “honouring a contract” means. UNLESS they are being used in a nefarious manner by the PMO just

What is the G8?
What the heck is Hezbollah?

You know the cool kids at school? With the fashionable clothes and the older friends, who always decided on the themes for socials and dances and basically did whatever they wanted? Yeah, it’s like that. The G8 refers to 8 of the world’s 11 richest countries, which get together every year to discuss Very Important Issues. Actually, that’s not meant to sound snarky. They actually are very important issues; global food supply, global warming, world peace and the like. So it’s a group of rich men (mainly) who meet and talk about how to make the world a better place. This year they CLEARLY meant business, because wives were not encouraged to attend . It’s all business, all the time.

Didja Ever Notice
Praetori

The louder and more operatic leftists become about the possibility of right-wing censorship, the more they get caught engaging in actual censorship. First there’s this: “SHOCK! Twitter Shuts Down Black American Leadership Alliance after appearance on O’Reilly regarding DC March“ But, hey! It’s only Twitter…after all, it’s not like it’s an important part of the media.* Then there’s this. And this is only YouTube — again only part of Google…nothing really important.** The second link — the YouTube one — shows a video by Lila Rose of Live Action. They’re a pro-life group who does “hits” on various organizations like Planned Parenthood. Someone like Lila herself or James O’Keefe calls or walks into an office of one of these organizations and suggests that they might like to make a large donation. However, they say, the donation should go “toward aborting minority babies,” because