You may have seen this momentarily on the news last week, but here’s the whole ceremony where Canada was recognized by Climate Action Network International as being “the absolute worst country” at the COP15 talks — an “honour” that plays remarkably well with most “Conservative” supporters.
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Yup.
Same sort of wise engagement and discussion as we had with, oh, puffins shitting on Dion and Jack Ruby shooting Stephen Harper.
This sort of stuff has become tedious.
And don’t you know.. the current scapegoat is the “developing world”, err.. China.
I read an article regarding nuclear power yesterday that suggested a significant influence on public opinion regarding nuclear power may be the “Simpsons”.
Seriously.
Think about this, for a moment.
If I burn an effigy of Michael Ignatieff, or, for that matter, call him “Iffy” and, perhaps, orchestrate some sham ceremony where I bestow upon him the “Two-face” medal of merit.. have I done society a favor? Have I contributed to the political discussion?
Silence, in both cases, would be more compelling.
Shorter Rob H: Everything’s the same and nothing every changes.
Oh, well…I’m positively gleeful that the World now knows just what we nice, wimpy, polite, boring Canadians have had to deal with for decades to develop the reputation of being a progressive country: a rump of cunning, undermining, vicious, cretinous, torture-loving back-stabbers.
And we’ve managed to do it without killing them. Hooray for us!
A little mockery isn’t such a bad thing, but yes, we certainly don’t have the most enlightened public discourse when it comes to some of the most serious issues confronting us such as environment and energy policy.
Have I contributed to the political discussion?
They obviously have, otherwise you wouldn’t be nagging them here. Their goal was to get some nasty coverage for the Harper government, mission accomplished. Same for the yesmen. They grabbed headlines for a week and set the tone of the Copenhagen discussion here in Canada. Both groups got far more out of their publicity stunts than they would have had they called their MP or written a blog post.
Rob’s being disengenous….these people do a lot more than just pull stunts like this.
In any case, my problem is with the degree of sabotage the Harper Conservatives have engaged in. That will come back to haunt them.
I didn’t say it didn’t work.
Trust me, mail outs to Jewish areas accusing the Liberals of being anti-Jewish “work”. That doesn’t make it a positive contribution to political dialogue. That doesn’t make it the “right” thing to do.
Problem is.. from either side of the spectrum, “When “our” guys do it, it’s just illustrating a valid point”.
At least with the blog world, occasionally, there is an actual debate. An exchange of ideas.
More and more, the “sale” of ideas has become something akin to the “sale” of Coca-cola. All show and no substance.
..and TG makes (again perhaps accidentally) another valid point. People like me, who have straddled the fence, sometimes lose interest in a party simply because of a loss of faith as much as a loss of ideas. Although I’m pro-choice, my culminating event in voting Reform was the attack on Stockwell Day’s position on abortion, while giving Chretien a free pass.
As TG alludes to, what goes around..
Here’s something Canadian media didn’t report, during the COP15 meeting the following countries also received this designation – in order now over the course of the conference:
All rich countries (I am not kidding, this is the term used)
Sweden
Finland
Austria
Saudi Arabia (twice)
Industrialized non-EU countries
Iceland
Japan (several times)
Kazakhstan
New Zealand (twice)
Norway
Russian Federation
Ukraine
United States
Australia (several times)
Austria
Croatia
Russia
Poland
Germany
The European Union (twice)
Sweden
Papua New Guinea
United States (several times)
Colombia
The Nordic countries