Tag Archives: John Baird

The Roundtable Podcast 49

Week of 04.08.2013

Brando

The T-shirt Turns 100 | John Baird encourages caution for Canadian travellers and diplomats after U.S. alert | Big tobacco seizure at Fort Erie bridge | Recommended Article: What religion has contributed to the world this month | Michael George Ansara: 1922-2013 | Senate reform | Texas faces possible shortage of execution drug | Gretzky’s childhood Koho stick fetches $38,838 in auction | Man who showed journalists alleged Rob Ford crack video arrested, offered tape to police for plea deal | NDP take two as PCs crack Toronto | Man tries to hide turtle in burger to sneak it past airport security

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Stephen Harper has good reason to be skeptical of the United Nations

Stephen Harper and the UN

RISING BY NECESSITY from the ash of its discredited predecessor, the United Nations on the 24th of January 1946 adopted its first resolution —  a call for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly of the atomic kind, and thereby for the exclusive, peaceful use of atomic energy.

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Linda Sobeh Ali and the Mediocrity of Palestinian Leadership

IT HAPPENS that I today regard the sudden retraction from Canadian soil of Linda Sobeh Ali, the Palestinian chargé d’affaires, as someone who has spent a number of years working in communications and public relations. In my profession — which has among other things interpolated me between and among differing cultures — I’ve had to pay due attention to protocol. I like to think I’m reasonably good at this delicate work and that I can smell from a distance those who are not. And at this moment I rather detect the aroma of amateurism on the air.

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Palestinian Statehood: a plague on your houses

AT SOME point, without the help either of the nudge or the wink, I’ll wager you have grasped through one commonplace observation the cynical and fraudulent character of the more crude manifestations of American nationalism. Well, are you in? Good. The observation to which I refer is the Chinese manufacture of so many American flags.

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John Baird Raises His Red Lantern

It appears (to me at least) that the Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, is learning about the world and its localized histories in public and in real-time. On the first of June, he admitted as much to Canadian Press journalist Bruce Cheadle, saying he was “hazy on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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When the Bookish Finish Last

There is a famous anecdote concerning two nineteenth-century British Prime Ministers and bitter rivals, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. The former may be credited with first articulating “Progressive Conservatism” — by way of his 1844 novel Coningsby, or The New Generation — and the latter with both establishing and dominating the British Liberal Party, having ended his affiliation to the High Tories. According to the standard account, Gladstone asserted (doubtless with approval) “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.” Disraeli’s response was characteristically immediate, biting, and witty: “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”

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