Centrerion Canadian Politics

Canadian Centrism (Carnival)

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Hello and welcome to the first edition of Canadian Centrism. Actually, make that welcome to the first Moderation Station. Okay, no scratch that, that's cheesy. Anyways, welcome to the first edition of a carnival on moderate politics, whose name has yet to be determined. We'll have posts for you on economics, foreign affairs, medecine, and a few other miscellaneous areas. FYI: centrism and moderation don't mean wishy-washiness. The centrist philosophy means the third road, and the best alternative, and is in contrast to narrow-minded partisanship. Check out wikipedia on moderates for more.

If you think your material fits here, you may be interested in writing for Centrerion, or perhaps doing some web work with us. On a related note and before I forget, here's how to submit to upcoming editions (the links are now also in our sidebar, for future reference):

1) Read our submission criteria. They're just guidelines though, so if you think your post fits in the carnival, even without respecting the criteria, just let us know why when you submit. Some of those here weren't perfect fits.
2) Use the Conservative Cat's Easy Post Submission form. There's an example already filled in, so make sure you edit all the fields. TTLB's Ubercarnival is also of interest, for finding carnivals
The main incentive for this is, of course, that Carnivals boost traffic to your blog. In addition, the links you get help boost you in Google's search results.

On with the show.

Foreign Affairs:

Tigerhawk lets us know that Iran is holding Israel hostage (with it's "civilian nuclear energy" program?). The irony of the thing, is that that may actually be stabilizing. An interesting argument, though one wonders at how rational the actions of Iran's leaders are, and thus whether this analysis is necessarily applicable.

Israellycool has connected the dots between different anti-Christian events going on in Gaza. Gee, Hamas takes power, and suddenly Dhimmis, er sorry, non-Muslims are in trouble? Yeah, that's a surprise.

The Moderate Voice has a really great discussion of the National Journal's rankings of Congress. According to a number of variables, but principally their voting, a list was compiled of how conservative or liberal each Representative and Senator is. Appearently, there is a long list of centrists in the House. A commentator named after a salad posted that Republican Jon Porter of Nevada ranks a 53 on social issues but in the 70s and 80s on
economics and foreign policy. A Canadian type Conservative it seems.

Far and Wide, a fellow Non-Partisan Canadian, has insight into the 'militarization' of American politics. He says that Bush's emphasis on national security has led to the Democrats trying to outflank him, and are thus actively recruiting former military personnel (though he fails to discuss the Democrats running away from Iraq, like Tigerhawk's post, above). The left is now a void (not a good thing, in yours truly's opinion).

Small Dead Animals - one of the first blogs to link here (that means they're smart) - has this excellent editorial on the goings-on in Australia concerning Shari'a. For those who aren't aware, Sharia is Islamic law. What I appreciate is the way he links this current issue with another one, the Muhammad cartoons. The Vatican's spokespeople didn't sound too smart on this one. The speech behind the post discusses Australia's traditional values, which, considering Australia began as a British penal colony (i.e. an island prison), is pretty funny.

The Lebanese Bloggers have an excellent piece on politicizing religion. The context for the post is the fools claiming to speak for Islam while terrorizing Danish diplomats and such.

Federal Politics:

Our colleague the Blue Grit has posted this fascinating article on the mainstream media's arrogant coverage of the Liberal leadership race. He's also got some interesting thoughts on the Liberal shadow cabinet.

The Progressive Right is opposed to a big brother-like program of national ID cards. It dissapoints me to see this coming from Stockwell Day, an ardent defender of Israel and generally intelligent man when it comes to foreign policy.

The Big Cajun Man (living in Canada) at Canadian Financial Stuff has a belated election wrap-up (made all the more belated by my personal slowness in setting this carnival up; my apologies). It's like Buckley's cough syrup, says the Big Cajun: tastes awful, but it works.

Mathieu Laberge's site, De Nottingham | From Nottingham, explains what many Quebeckers think about federalism vs separatism. The post is in response to an earlier article, from which people falsely thought he was endorsing one option over the other (though he admittedly leans separatist overall). He's a good source for the pulse of French Canadians, so you might consider bookmarking De Nottingham.

Big shot Liberal Warren Kinsella has an equally astute piece about freedom of the press (I couldn't get a link to the specific post). His post is actually a bit of a collection of material, but the contrasts are excellent. I was surprised to read that a person who'd visited Auschwitz could believe people have the right to openly deny the Holocaust, while being opposed to any speech which promotes violence. Uhm, FYI: propaganda that dehumanizes others, of which minimizing their pain is a part, legitimizes and facilitates violence. Thus we had propaganda for months in Rwanda before the genocide there. I haven't checked up on the history of the ongoing genocide in Darfur, but I'm certain there's been a similar shitbucket of propaganda there.

Economics:

The ever-classic Blast Furnace Blog (who seems to also have difficulty naming things) has more great economic analysis (more, relative to his earlier analysis of Harper's GST tax cuts, which numbers came out similar to my own). He reports that our business leaders want to get rid of child poverty. Now if only he can have a more visually appealing background.

Economist's View has some interesting material on the Bank of Canada boss, David Dodge, and his opinions on the role each nation has to play in the global economy.

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That's it for this week's piece. I'd like to ask everyone to spend some time over at STAND Canada's website, which I mentioned above. Students Taking Action Now: Darfur is a student run NGO (non-governmental organism) aiming to halt the genocide being committed in Darfur. Read up on the STAND's fight against genocide, and do what you can to help act against the barbarity of the government in Sudan (of which Darfur is a province). I've been to some of their fundraisers myself, and its immediately apparent that these people are well-informed, on the ball, and a very proactive group.
I'll try and post a bigger piece about this group soon.

Thanks for dropping by the Moderates' Non-Partisan Carnival of Canadian Centrism and Foreign Politics and ...

posted by lecentre @ 8:06 p.m.