Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘iggy’

• The rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners, who have been underground for 69 days, is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. As of right now, two of the miners have been rescued so far, in a slow and emotionally-charged process.
• An American federal judge has issued an injunction against the US military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, which effectively ends the policy and allows gay Americans to serve openly in their country’s military. It’s about time. The US Justice Department has 60 days in which to file an appeal, however, and the Obama Administration may be forced to do so, thanks to the timing of the midterm elections.
• Closer to home, Canada has lost its bid for a UN Security Council seat, in an embarrassing debacle that has Harper and Iggy pointing fingers at one another. As usual, there are accusations that it was because Canada is “too pro-Israel“, whatever that means. (In the UN, that typically means anyone who doesn’t pander to Arab nations’ crazed Israel-hatred. But we all knew that.)
• The Halak-less Habs are 1-1 so far this season, after an exciting win against the Pens on Saturday night. For what it’s worth, Halak is 2-0 in St. Louis so far.

With Bob Rae’s withdrawal from the Liberal leadership race, looks like it’ll be Michael Ignatieff by acclaimation.

A strategist more than an idealist, Ignatieff doesn’t arouse much excitement among disillusioned and disenfranchised voters. He’ll be painted as a neo-con and Harper wannabe by the left and as a boring academic with no new ideas by the right, and his three decades spent in the US don’t exactly bolster his credentials to lead Canada.

The Liberal party’s saviour? Hardly. Better than Rae? Absolutely.

Dion’s overtime win against Ignatieff foreshadowed the Habs’ overtime win against the Leafs.

Eat your heart out, Toronto!

Stéphane Dion is the new Liberal leader and is fairly likely to be the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Despite myself, I kind of like Dion, even if he doesn’t have as fun a nickname as Michael “Iggy Pop” Ignatieff.

The quote of the day probably comes from Pauline:

Much is being made of Stephane Dion’s being *everybody’s second choice*. While that is mathematically a good thing, it doesn’t resound well for the future federal election campaign. I can see the bumper stickers now.

I think that Dion has a history as an impassioned defender of Canadian unity, which is good, and could certainly be said to deserve this much more than Ignatieff, in terms of his having paid his dues to the party.

But, like Pauline, I too am a bit uneasy at his foreign policy stances. He’s come out in opposition to the Canadian military role in Afghanistan, and his friendship stance with Israel has been questionable, particularly during the summer’s Lebanon war when he made some worrying statements. Nothing much worse than the rest of the Liberal candidates, really, but a far cry from the staunch friendship I would hope to see from the leadership of this country. Now that he is the leader, he will of course be called upon to clarify some of his stances, but we’ll have to see where he goes with this.

The next campaign is a lock to be about the environment now, thanks to Dion’s impassioned position on the Kyoto accord. And the great losers in the next election could be the Green Party if Dion successfully picks up support from that camp.

Final thought: the Liberal party – or any party for that matter – will think long and hard before holding another leadership convention in Montreal during ice storm season.

After three ballots, it’s a two-man race: Dion versus Ignatieff. Perhaps surprisingly, Dion is in the lead.

Looks like Damian Penny’s early predictions are surprisingly accurate.

But all now rests on what Bob Rae decides to do, and where he throws his support. If he frees his delegates, it’s hard to predict where they’ll vote. If he chooses to back one candidate or the other, it will lock up the leadership for that person.

We’ll know soon.

Update: Rae has released his delegates. With Dion as the current momentum canadidate, and given the strength of the anyone-but-Ignatieff movement in Liberal circles, I think that Dion will take all in the end… but we won’t know until they vote.

Liberal leadership candidates are falling all over each other to deny Harper’s accusation that they’re anti-Israel:

Bob Rae, Ignatieff’s chief rival, likened Harper’s comment to being accused of a hate crime, while Gerard Kennedy said Harper had surrendered his ability to act as prime minister for partisan purposes.

“I think that the prime minister’s comments were shameful,” Rae said. “This goes beyond the usual give-and-take of partisan life. It’s an appalling statement.”

He noted his own wife and children are Jewish and he’s travelled often to the Middle East.

Yesterday, Ignatieff insisted he remains a supporter of Israel.

“It is disgraceful that the prime minister is playing crass politics with the issue of the Middle East,” he said.

“The Liberal Party has always been a friend of Israel, and I will always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel and the Canadian Jewish community to defend

Israel’s right to respond when it is attacked by terrorists or when its neighbours wrongfully deny its right to exist.”

Kennedy echoed the concerns. “I think he (Harper) has given up his sworn responsibilities as prime minister to play for partisan advantage, and I think it is highly unfortunate,” he said.

Kennedy described himself as “resolutely a friend of Israel” but also “a friend of Lebanon.”

Stephane Dion said: “I feel insulted by my prime minister.”

Sure, the Libs are seeing this as a way to try to attack Harper. But personally, I find it refreshing that, regardless of their actual individual positions, all the Liberal candidates seem to feel that it’s politically expedient to come across as being supporters of Israel. In a time when being anti-Israel is more and more “in”, it’s nice to see that the potential next leaders of our country still recognize that it’s “out”. In other words, it’s a relief to see that being perceived as being “anti-Israel” in this country is still bad PR.

Even as they attack Harper for being too pro-Israel and try to spin this into a political point for the Liberals, the leadership candidates seem to understand that they have to prove – or at least claim – to be friends of Israel in order to win the race. Cynical as this may be, it could be a lot worse; they could be trying to prove that they’re the most anti-Israel. (Of course, we’re talking about the Liberals here, not the NDP…)

Maclean’s magazine has an interesting profile of Michael Ignatieff, one of the few prominent Canadians to speak out in support of US military action in Iraq:

“What I felt was disappointing about a lot of Canadian opposition to the war was that very few people seemed to give a damn about the human-rights situation,” Ignatieff says. “Very few seemed to care that peace had the consequence of leaving 26 million people inside a really odious tyranny.”

Ignatieff also has some choice words about the UN, the organization to which his father was Canada’s ambassador:

“Touring Canada, what bothered me was that the only legitimacy that mattered to most of the audiences was the legal legitimacy of the UN,” he says. “Well, the UN screwed up in Rwanda, it screwed up in Bosnia — it screws up most of the time.” In a seminar for Kennedy School staff on his Iraq position, Ignatieff was even more blunt: “The United Nations is a messy, wasteful, log-rolling organization.”

An interesting read.