Daily Archives: August 18, 2021

Are the Liberals liberal? Does the Labor Party stand chiefly for those who labour? Electoral politics is nothing if not about wrapping ideas - about values and power - in words.

On Friday, the Morrison government introduced a Party Registration Integrity Bill to the Commonwealth parliament. The bill would let established parties veto the use of words like Liberal, Labor or Democrats in the names of newer, rival parties. It will also make it harder to register - or keep registered - parties, by tripling the number of members required to 1,500, unless the party has an MP.

What is going on? Is this about democratic values, or is it a power play?

People may differ about the bills justification. But one thing is clear to a lawyer: as drafted, the bill is cooked. It overreaches and is not well drafted.

Read more: From robo calls to spam texts: annoying campaign tricks that are legal

To take an obvious example, the bill will let the Liberal Party control the word Liberal, if contained in the name of any other registered party. That includes the Liberal Democratic Party of ex-senator David Leyonhjelm and potential-senator Campbell Newman fame.

The Liberal Party is also upset by the emergence of the New Liberals. But Liberals is not the same as Liberal. Indeed its a noun, not an adjective. So perhaps the bill wont cure that upset.

Mere function words, like the or of dont count. Nor is any collective noun for people protected. Think party or Australians. Linguists will be left to argue whether collective nouns like Liberals or Greens are off-limits. Can Indigenous be bagsed? Your guess is as good as mine.

Frivolous and vexatious names will also be struck out. So no Australian version of the UKs Monster Raving Loony Party. Oh, the shame; if Brits can take a joke, why cant we?

Australias most colourful political figure is currently seeking to remove his own name from his Clive Palmer United Australia Party. But if he doesnt, he could forever veto anyone else called Clive or Palmer naming a party after themselves. Real names are not function words.

More seriously, handing one party squatters rights over everyday words is troublesome. It creates a virtual intellectual property right. That is fine for trademarking commercial goods; its another thing altogether in politics, where language is dynamic and fundamental. Worryingly, it gives leverage to established parties. They could ask a newer party for its support (with legislation or electorally) in return for permission to use the overlapping word in their name.

The government argues the bill is needed to minimise confusion among electors. After all, compulsory and preferential voting means identifiable names on ballot papers are crucial, as most electors vote for parties, and some only decide their full preferences when mulling the ballot itself.

Why does party registration, and names, matter? Anyone can form a political group. But to have your groups name on the ballot paper, and control public funding for garnering 4% of the vote, you need to register as a party.

Before registration systems arose in the 1980s, Australian politics was largely a battle between Labor and the Liberal-Country Party Coalition. Other forces came and went, often via splits in the major groupings.

The Liberal Movement was a progressive liberalist party in the 1970s, while the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) had success as a socially conservative, but union-oriented, party in the 1950s-70s. Their names were natural enough.

Australian parties today are electoral machines more than social movements. Each, understandably, wants to guard its brand. Infamously, the Liberal Democratic Party won a Senate seat in 2013 when it lucked the first place on a huge ballot paper while the Liberal Party was hidden in the middle.

Read more: High Court challenge in Kooyong and Chisholm unlikely to win, but may still land a blow

In response, laws were passed to allow visual cues on ballot papers, via party logos. And the independent Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and courts can already rule whether a name can be confused with another party, or implies a false association.

In recent decades, registered parties have proliferated, partly due to opportunists wanting a ticket in the lottery of the final Senate seat up for grabs. That gambit has been significantly nullified by making voters choose where their preferences go (if anywhere) in the Senate.

That leaves the long-term decline in voter base of both major parties as the chief driver of the creation of new parties. For national elections, there are 46 registered parties. In Queensland, without a state Senate, there are barely a dozen. Is too much potential choice a bad thing?

Forty-six is a lot, but some will die naturally. Others will be wiped away by the increased, 1,500-member rule. Which is fair enough, unless you are a regional party focused only on the Senate in a small state or territory. The 1,500-member rule also wont deter parties formed by wealthy interests, if the party can afford a zero-dollar membership fee.

Ultimately, this bill is dubious not because of mathematics, but linguistics. It gives established parties control over language. Not even the Acadmie Franaise, much lampooned for its elite rulings over how French should be used, has that kind of power.

See the article here:

Who's Liberal? What's Labor? New bill to give established parties control of their names is full of holes - The Conversation AU

These are surreal times In Afghanistan. In a matter of hours, the old order had folded like nine pins and all that was left were the ruins of the last two decades.The new order is yet to emerge fully but the contours of that order can be discerned based on the past experience of the Afghan nation and the region. Even as the Taliban advance entered its final lap, the western intelligence was still predicting that Kabul could be taken in a matter of 30 days. But it took less than 30 hours for the Taliban fighters to reach the gates of the Presidential Palace in Kabul from where the incumbent, Ashraf Ghani, had already fled. The West was in any case cutting and running but the speed of Taliban advance meant that once again America had to live through the Saigon moment with diplomats being evicted by the helicopters and sensitive documents being destroyed. Despite the optics, the US policymakers still continue to insist that the Afghan mission had been successful.

As late as last month, US President Joe Biden was pushing back against suggestions that the Taliban could swiftly conquer Afghanistan by arguing that the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. And in less than a month western nations have been scrambling to evacuate their citizens and diplomatic staff even while acknowledging that there will be a new government in Afghanistan. British government is underscoring the new ground realities when in matter of days its discourse has shifted from asking the Taliban to protect human rights to asking the West to work together to ensure that Afghanistan doesnt become a breeding ground for terror.

The West will be trying to preserve some shreds of dignity from the mess unfolding by telling the world that political reconciliation of some sort in Afghanistan is still possible. But for an outfit that has won this victory against the mightiest military power on the earth through the use of force, any talk of moderation will only be temporary. And in the territories that the Taliban have already captured, they have gone back to their good old-fashioned regressive agenda against women and ethnic and religious minorities that had so shocked the global conscience during their horrific 1996-2001 rule. From young girls being forced to marry Taliban fighters to decreeing oppressive dictates against women, from summary executions of soldiers and political opponents to banning music and television, there is hardly anything evolved in this Taliban 2.0.

But western governments will tell their people that some form of accommodation with the Taliban, whether evolved or not, is important for the larger good of the Afghan people as this would mean Afghan taking ownership of their own future. While the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan will be brushed aside, the strategic consequences of Talibans re-emergence will have to be reckoned with by the West for a long time. If, as is being suggested in some quarters, one of the reasons for the US withdrawing troops from Afghanistan is to focus attention squarely on the competition with China, then the credibility of western assurances as a security guarantor after the Afghan debacle are not worth the paper they are written on. The coalition of partners that the West is trying to construct to manage Chinas rise is likely to face greater fissures as western allies look at the Afghanistan car crash with a degree of foreboding.

The limits of western power today are all too palpable and the embarrassment of Afghanistan is likely to constrain western strategic thinking for decades now. The West perhaps couldnt have built a nation in Afghanistan but the manner in which the withdrawal has unfolded casts a long shadow on the Western ability to manage the emerging, highly volatile global order.

As the Taliban wait in glee to be embraced by the liberal West, those Afghans who decided to believe and stand by the values of democracy and human rights, only to be abandoned in the end, will always stand as a testament to the infirmities of the liberal global order. Its nothing but a sham!

The author is Professor at Kings College London and Director of Research at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

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As the Taliban rise in Afghanistan, the liberal West crumbles - Business Standard

Its been 20 years since I published my book Bias, about liberal bias in the mainstream media. Because Id spent nearly 30 years as a CBS correspondent, and wrote about what Id personally seen and heard, the book caused quite a stir. It was a bestseller, and over and over I heard the same thing from people whod read it: that it confirmed what they knew from reading mainstream newspapers and watching network newscasts, but they were glad that an insider was confirming their take on the subject.

Predictably, liberal journalists were not among its fans. Almost everyone repeated the mantra that the whole notion of liberal bias was a fiction, an outrage, a right-wing concoction.

Over the years since, many of the bias-deniers have fallen silent. After all, there is only so much even the most arrogant media heavyweight can say in the face of overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence.

So, I was surprised to learn recently that Chuck ToddCharles (Chuck) David ToddNo liberal bias in the media? Who is Chuck Todd kidding, besides himself? Fauci 'very concerned' about COVID-19 surge following Sturgis rally Fauci says some likely to need booster COVID-19 shots MORE, host of NBCs Meet the Press, is still at it.

Now, I should say right here that I once met Chuck Todd at an airport and he seemed like a nice guy. Nor does he strike me and I say this sincerely as a fool. So, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and conclude that he really cant believe what hes saying, that he cant be serious when he says that liberal bias a) doesnt exist, b) never did and c) is a malicious trope invented by Republicans. But who knows, Im not a mind reader; maybe he does believe it. Or maybe, like a press secretary who must stand straight-faced and defend an obviously disastrous policy blunder, hes just taking one for the home team.

After all, mainstream journalism may not be great for the country, as it continues to sow misunderstanding and ill feeling, but it has been very good for Todd and his friends.

Specifically, what Todd said in a recent interview is that journalists did not defend themselves and their integrity vigorously enough. We should have fought back better in the mainstream media, he said. We shouldnt [have] accepted the premise that there was liberal bias. We ended up in this both-sides trope. We bought into the idea that, Oh my God, were perceived as having a liberal bias.

Hey, Chuck, one is tempted to reply: Theres a reason that mainstream journalists are perceived as having a liberal bias. Its because mainstream journalists have a liberal bias.

But, again, that would be presuming that he expects to be taken seriously. And the fact is, its hard to believe anybody with a pulse, let alone a big-name reporter, actually still thinks the American news media play fair. The American people sure dont. A recent Gallup poll found that only 21 percent of the public has confidence in newspapers and even fewer 16 percent trust TV news. The latter is about the same percentage who believe the U.S. is controlled by Satan worshippers.

Still, in a country of 330 million (not counting those newly arrived across the Southern border), that makes more than 50 million souls still inclined to believe what they hear from the likes of CNNs Jim AcostaJames (Jim) AcostaNo liberal bias in the media? Who is Chuck Todd kidding, besides himself? CNN's Jim Acosta on delta variant: 'Why not call it the DeSantis variant?' Arizona secretary of state to Trump before rally: 'Take your loss and accept it and move on' MORE. So, for their benefit (and possibly Chuck Todds), a quick recap:

In fact, lets start with the way journalists are playing down the mess on our Southern border the one brought on by Joe BidenJoe BidenUtah 'eager' to assist with resettling Afghan refugees: governor Pelosi presses moderate Democrats amid budget standoff Democrat on Biden's claim some Afghans didn't want to leave earlier: 'Utter BS' MORE, who practically sent engraved invitations to everybody in Central America inviting them to come to the United States.

While were on the subject, it is apparently also of little news value that the president at times seems to have trouble finishing a sentence without babbling incoherently.

Of course, whats newsworthy can quickly change, according to circumstances. For a long time, anyone who suggested the Wuhan virus mightve come out of a lab in that city was a conspiracy-mongering, right-wing nut who had to be censored with The New York Times leading the charge. Now that the Wuhan lab story no longer can help Donald TrumpDonald TrumpFeehery: Afghanistan is Biden's Katrina OvernightDefense: US scrambles to get Americans out of Kabul Spike in traffic to DC tunnel website caused operator to contact FBI before Jan. 6 MORE, a writer in The Times wonders, wide-eyed, Did the Coronavirus Come From a Lab?

In fact, to really see just how unbiased journalists are, lets take a stroll down memory lane and contrast how theyre treating Joe Biden with the way they treated You-Know-Who.

Never mind what you think of Trump personally, Ive got big problems with him but does anyone outside the Satan-worshipping community (and possibly Chuck Todd) honestly believe the Times gave him a fair shake?

No need even to go through the particulars; you can pick up pretty much any copy of the Gray Lady from the moment Trump went down the Trump Tower escalator to well, actually today, and it hits you in the face. Case in point: On May 19, 2019, the paper claimed that Donald Trump had run an unabashedly racist campaign harsh, to be sure, but editorial writers are entitled to their opinions, right? Except, wait, this wasnt an editorial; it was presented in a front-page story by two of the papers top political reporters, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, as indisputable fact.

Indeed, in the Times it was simply a given that Donald Trump, his policies, and his supporters were racist, misogynistic and generally hateful.

The New York Times is journalisms equivalent of the Holy Bible. So completely does it set the agenda for what other news organizations cover in America that trust me, as a correspondent at CBS News for 28 years if the Times went on strike in the morning, CBS wouldnt know what to put on the air that evening.

Little wonder that after Trumps first 100 days in office, a Harvard University study found the Times coverage was 87 percent negative. (By the way, that was topped by NBCs 93 percent negative coverage. But since NBC employs Chuck Todd, that means the study was wrong and the coverage was scrupulously objective.)

Nor was Trump allowed to defend himself. CNN attack-dog Acosta might have been speaking for the entire White House press corps when he reported, after watching Trump respond to media attacks, that the president was ranting and raving for the better part of the last hour.

Then again, as Chuck Todd says, the problem is all perception. Take, for example, the Time story that went viral the day Trump took office, saying hed removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. It turned out the bust hadnt been moved at all; a Secret Service agent was standing in front of it, so Times guy thought it wasnt there.

Obviously, theres no such thing as liberal bias in the news. Imagine how bad it would be if there were.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBOs Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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No liberal bias in the media? Who is Chuck Todd kidding, besides himself? | TheHill - The Hill

COBOURG, ONT. -- Its early days in the 2021 federal election campaign, but already mandatory vaccinations are shaping up to be a key wedge issue, with the parties sniping at each other over their positions.

The policy is seen by many medical professionals as a potential way to incentivise those who are hesitant, boost immunization rates, and ideally help steer the country out of the COVID-19 pandemic faster.

Here is where the parties stand on vaccine mandates for federal workers and federally-regulated sectors.

After suggesting vaccine mandates could be more divisive than effective and just days before the federal election was called, the governing Liberals announced that it would be making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for federal public service workers as well as those in the federally-regulated transportation sector.

Their policy, which would take affect in October, would also apply to any commercial air, interprovincial train and cruise-ship passengers.

Trudeau seemingly set up the wedge in his election-launch speech, framing it as a policy that Canadians should have a say on at the ballot box, and brushing off one outgoing Conservative MPs suggestion it is tyrannical.

The Liberal leader doubled down on the first full day on the campaign trail, taking aim at his opponents for their stances and suggesting that the example of a mandate for federal workers could set the standard for businesses looking to encourage their employees to be vaccinated.

Asked on Monday where things stand with this plan, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau told reporters that the federal government is working with unions to develop exemption criteria.

Asked for more clarity on Tuesday, Trudeau elaborated slightly to say that, for anyone who does not have a legitimate medical reason or refuses to be vaccinated, there will be consequences. He dodged follow up questions on what those consequences might be.

After dodging questions about how a Conservative government would approach the vaccine mandate issue for federal workers, late on Sunday night OTooles office issued a statement announcing that if elected, the Conservatives would take an alternative approach to mandatory vaccines.

Specifically, the Conservatives would require unvaccinated Canadian passengers to present a recent negative test result or pass a rapid test before getting on a bus, train, plane, or ship. OToole would also require federal public servants who arent vaccinated to pass a daily rapid test.

We do feel that Canadians have the right to make their own health-care decisions and we encourage people to get vaccinated, but we also have to make sure we have the tools to protect all Canadians from some people that will not be vaccinated, OToole said Monday.

He also launched into Trudeau for politicizing vaccines, calling it dangerous and irresponsible, with his team also suggesting that what OToole proposed is in line with Trudeaus plan.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh had been asked for his position in advance of the election and had offered general comments about the needs for unions to be consulted, but it wasnt until Monday that his team came forward with their stance.

The NDP agree with the Liberals proposed vaccine mandate for federal workers, but called on them to have the systemas well as the promised international travel-focused vaccine passport in place by early September.

This would mean public servants would have to be fully vaccinated by Labour Day and the government should offer paid leave for workers to go get their shots. Singh suggested as well that Canadians should be able to use the passport in domestic situations as well.

On Tuesday, Singh took his position a step further, stating that in situations where employees refuse to be vaccinated for reasons other than health, there could be disciplinary measures taken.

All collective agreements include a process for progressive discipline - up to and including termination. Discipline should always be a last resort, but may be necessary in rare cases to protect the health and safety of Canadians, Singh said in a statement.

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul was asked her position on the federal public service vaccine mandate on Monday and she said it was something the party is considering very seriously.

Paul said she is keen to see the governments plan and how it intends to handle those who have legitimate reasons to not roll up their sleeves, citing religious or cultural reasons as examples.

She also criticized the Liberal plan for being one thrown out there just before the election.

With files from CTV News Sarah Turnbull and Sharon Lindores.

Continue reading here:

Vaccine mandates: Where the parties stand on the campaign wedge issue - CTV News

Do you trust the federal government? When voters were asked that question in December, 1958, by pollsters from a center now called the American National Election Studies, at the University of Michigan, seventy-three per cent said yes, they had confidence in the government to do the right thing either almost all the time or most of the time. Six years later, they were asked basically the same question, and seventy-seven per cent said yes.

Pollsters ask the question regularly. In a Pew survey from April, 2021, only twenty-four per cent of respondents said yes. And that represented an uptick. During Obamas and Trumps Presidencies, the figure was sometimes as low as seventeen per cent. Sixty years ago, an overwhelming majority of Americans said they had faith in the government. Today, an overwhelming majority say they dont. Who is to blame?

One answer might be that no one is to blame; its just that circumstances have changed. In 1958, the United States was in the middle of an economic boom and was not engaged in foreign wars; for many Americans, there was domestic tranquillity. Then came the growing intensity of the civil-rights movement, the war in Vietnam, urban unrest, the womens-liberation movement, the gay-liberation movement, Watergate, the oil embargo, runaway inflation, the hostage crisis in Iran. Americans might reasonably have felt that things had spun out of control. By March, 1980, trust in government was down to twenty-seven per cent.

Eight months later, Ronald Reagan, a man who opposed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare, which he called an attempt to impose socialism, and who wanted to make Social Security voluntarya man who essentially ran against the New Deal and the Great Society, a.k.a. the welfare statewas elected President. He defeated the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, by almost ten percentage points in the popular vote. In this present crisis, Reagan said in his Inaugural Address, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

Meanwhile, government swung into action. Inflation was checked; the economy recovered. Watergate and Vietnam receded in the rearview mirror. Popular programs like Medicare and Social Security remained intact. For all his talk about reducing the size and the role of government, Reagan did not eliminate a single major program in his eight years in office.

Yet, during those eight years, the trust index never rose above forty-five per cent. And since Reagan left office, aside from intermittent spikes, including one after September 11th, it has declined steadily. In the past fourteen years, in good times and bad, the index has never exceeded thirty per cent.

The questionnaire used in the A.N.E.S. survey is designed to correct for partisanship. A typical preamble to the trust question reads, People have different ideas about the government in Washington. These ideas dont refer to Democrats or Republicans in particular, but just to the government in general. Still, when there is a Democratic President Republicans tend to have less faith in government in general, and Democrats tend to have more. But partisanship accounts only for changes in the distribution of responses. It doesnt explain why over all, no matter the President, the publics level of trust in government has been dropping.

So maybe someone is to blame. It is a convenience to reviewers, although not an aid to clarity, that two recent books devoted to the subject assign responsibility to completely different perpetrators. In At War with Government (Columbia), the political scientists Amy Fried and DouglasB. Harris blame the Republican Party. They say that the intentional cultivation and weaponization of distrust represent the fundamental strategy of conservative Republican politics from Barry Goldwater to Donald Trump. The principal actors in their account are Reagan and Newt Gingrich, who was Speaker of the House during Bill Clintons second term as President.

In Public Citizens (Norton), the historian Paul Sabin suggests that much of the blame lies with liberal reformers. Blaming conservatives for the end of the New Deal era is far too simplistic, he says, explaining that the attack on the New Deal state was also driven by an ascendant liberal public interest movement. His principal actor is Ralph Nader. Its a sign of how divergent these books are that Gingrichs name does not appear anywhere in Sabins book, and Naders name does not appear in Fried and Harriss.

Nader became a public figure in 1965, when he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a book about automobile safety, a subject that had interested him since he was a law student at Harvard, in the nineteen-fifties. The book got a lot of attention when it was revealed that General Motors had tapped Naders phone and hired a detective to follow him. He sued, and won a settlement, which he used to establish the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. In 1966, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which empowered the federal government to set safety standards for automobiles, a matter heretofore left largely to the states. Operating with a steady stream of ambitious students from lite law schools, known as Naders Raiders, he then took on, among other causes, meat inspection; air and water pollution; and coal-mining, radiation, and natural-gas-pipeline regulation. Sabin credits these efforts with helping to pass the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act (1968), the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act (1969), the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970), which created osha.

The key to all these successes, Sabin thinks, is that a new player arose in government policymaking: the public. People like Nader argued that government officials and regulatory agencies werent an effective check on malign business interests, because they were in bed with the industries they were supposed to regulate. There was no seat at the table for the consumer, or for the people obliged to live with air and water pollution. The solution was the nonprofit public-interest law firm, an organization independent of the government but sufficiently well funded to sue corporations and government agencies on behalf of the public. The power of groups like the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club grew. By the nineteen-seventies, the environmental movement had acquired political clout. It helped that courts were willing to grant these groups legal standing.

You would think that congressional acts addressing workplace safety and pollution would have raised the level of trust in the federal government. The government was taking over from the states and looking out for peoples health and welfare. And here is where Sabins argument gets tricky. He says that liberal reformers assailed not only the industries responsible for pollution, unsafe working conditions, and so on but also the government agencies assigned to oversee them. The reformers essentially accused groups like the Federal Trade Commission of corruption. It was not enough for them to mobilize public opinion on behalf of laws that a Democratic Congress was more than willing to pass. They sought to expose and condemn the compromises that government agencies were making with industry.

The reformers had the effrontery of the righteous. One of the leading environmentalists in the Senate was Edmund Muskie. This wasnt an easy position. Muskie was from Maine, a state that was dependent on the paper-mill industry. But Nader and his allies attacked Muskie for giving out a business-as-usual license to pollute. At a 1970 press conference to launch a book on pollution, Vanishing Air, a Nader ally said that Muskie did not deserve the credit he has been given. Sabin thinks that rhetoric like this made the public suspicious of government in general.

It is certainly true that distrust has been promoted from the left as well as from the right. Although distrust is higher among Republicans than among Democrats, the antiwar and the Black Power movements, in the nineteen-sixties, were dont trust the government movements. So are the defund the police movements of today.

But those were not the political causes of public-interest groups. Sabin, who plainly is sympathetic to these causes, thinks that the new breed of liberal reformers, with their hatred for compromise, made government look, at best, like a sclerotic and indifferent bureaucracy, and, at worst, like an enabler of irresponsible corporate practices at the expense of public health and welfare. The liberal reformers cast the federal government as an impediment to the public interest, Sabin concludes, and the political right ran with their critique, even if that was never their desire or intention.

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Are Liberals to Blame for Our Crisis of Faith in Government? - The New Yorker

(Image supplied by Twitter).

The federal Liberal candidate for Perth-Wellington says we are at a point where we need to decide how the post recovery from COVID-19 will present itself.

Brendan Knight says the election will allow voters to decide what direction they want Canada to go as we get close to the end of the pandemic.

He says, locally, voters will get to choose who they want to represent them in Ottawa.

Knight says the arts and culture sector is one area that needs to be well supported at a federal level.

Its going to be a long time before we get back to a pre-pandemic state and thats going to need some flexibility for the riding.

Also running in the September 20th election are Conservative candidate John Nater, NDP candidate Kevin Kruchkywich and Peoples Party of Canada candidate Wayne Baker.

We will be profiling all of the declared candidates this week.

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Liberal candidate Knight says election is about who people want to represent them in Ottawa - My Stratford Now

Afghanistan: Women protest against Taliban in Kabul

Britons and Afghan refugees are beginning to arrive in the United Kingdom after Taliban troops seized control of Kabul on Sunday. Passengers arrived at RAF Brize Norton in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Boris Johnson stressed Britain owed a debt of gratitude to all those who have worked with us to make Afghanistan a better place over the last 20 years.

He added: Many of them, particularly women, are now in urgent need of our help.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid yesterday made his first public appearance in 20 years after insurgents defeated the Afghan government.

He outlined how Afghanistans future will abide by the nations national ethics and national tradition under strict Sharia Law.

He said: Islam is important in Afghanistan and anything against Islam will not be accepted!

READ MORETony Blair called out for 'deafening silence' on Afghanistan crisis

All will have rights under the umbrella of Islam.

Fears have emerged that women will be stripped of their freedoms under Taliban control.

During their brief stint of control in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, women were forced to wear the all-covering burka and were not allowed to work.

Girls could attend school, but had to leave when they turned 12.

Labour MP for Tooting, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, yesterday tweeted: World leaders washing their hands of Afghanistan, is shameful.

There are women and girls who have led lives incompatible with Taliban beliefs for two decades - to turn our back on them now would be a catastrophe.

Television, music and cinemas were also banned.

The BBC yesterday reported public music in shopping centres had already been turned off following the insurgents takeover.

DON'T MISSHorror chart shows how reign of terror in Afghanistan never ended[INSIGHT]Biden said Afghanistan not like Vietnam: No one will be air-lifted'[QUOTES]Iran paid Taliban bounties to attack US airbase intelligence[INSIGHT]

However, astonishing photos have emerged of life in Afghanistan in the Sixties, with a seemingly more liberal and westernised society.

While the nation has been fractured by internal conflict and foreign intervention for centuries, it made tentative steps towards modernisation in the Fifties and Sixties.

There was a brief, relatively peaceful era when modern buildings were constructed in Kabul alongside older, traditional mud structures.

Burkas became optional for a time and women were allowed to attend university and go to work.

One photograph from 1962 shows female Afghan medical students and their female professor examining a plaster showing a part of a human body.

While two more, both from the same era, show young girls being taught at school.

Arguably the most astonishing of all, taken in 1967, is a photo of four young Afghan women outside the Kabul Airport dressed in western fashion.

Their outfits present a vivid change from the tradition of years gone by.

While Afghanistan appeared to be on a path towards an open, prosperous society, progress was halted in the Seventies as a series of bloody coups, invasions and civil wars became, reversing almost all the positive steps taken forwards.

In 1973, King Mohammed Zahir Shah was deposed and the Republic of Afghanistan established.

The coup was executed by then-Army commander and prince, Mohammed Daoud Khan, assisted by leftist Army officers and civil servants.

The King decided not to retaliate and remained in exile in Italy.

Then, in 1978, Afghan communists known as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew President Khan in the Sowr Revolution, killing him and most of his family at the presidential palace.

The revolution resulted in the creation of a Soviet-aligned government with Nur Muhammad Taraki as President.

The revolution, which was ordered by PDPA member Hafizullah Amin, who would become a significant figure in the revolutionary government, marked the onset of 43 years of conflict in the country.

In the Eighties, the US and the Soviet Union waged a war of proxy in Afghanistan, with the USSR finally withdrawing troops in 1989.

This is when Taliban influence dramatically increased and their strict laws on women began to be enforced.

By 1996, they had control of Kabul and ruled with an iron fist for five years, before the US-led intervention from the West in 2001.

The current situation looks set to erase any progress for womens rights made in the last 20 years.

Boris Johnson will lead a debate in Parliament today on the ongoing crisis.

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Astonishing photos show more liberal and westernised Afghanistan in Sixties and Seventies - Daily Express

I thought I should reflect a bit before deciding on who would get my vote.

Compassion and the desire to do the right thing for the people is an important quality in a political leader, as is courage, respect for all people, and humility. I think our members should be well educated, and have skills in listening and planning. Probably one of the most important things in a leader is respect for the democratic process.

Here in Nova Scotia, we need leaders who will protect nature and reverse current destructive practices.

For most of the last seven years of Liberal government, former premier Stephen McNeil ruled like a 17th century monarch. After COVID-19 struck, he appeared almost daily on TV with Dr. Robert Strang, and showed a more compassionate side. A cynic would say he used the power of television to remake his image.

On TV we saw a leader talking about hugging our loved ones, a sharp contrast to the premier who bullied doctors, denigrated teachers, disrespected nurses, tried to flatten prosecutors, and dismissed the media.

McNeil used legislation to abort the collective bargaining process. His centralization policy resulted in the disappearance of local autonomy in education and health care, and ensured centralized control with handpicked yes-people who suffered from central-office syndrome." It also ensured a lack of common sense from locals who had a better grasp of local needs.

McNeils priority was to balance the budget, a laudable goal. However, he ignored people who tried to tell him what the needs were in health and education, the two highest expenditures in a provincial government. In doing so, he made a major mess of health care, as the doctor debacle clearly illustrated, and he moved the progression of education backwards.

His controlling approach to health resulted in the creation of a duplicate health administration, the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA), the board of which had more accountants than doctors. When doctors were later added, their voting capacity was limited. The new health authority dismissed common practices in the hiring of doctors, and made recruitment a joke.

In education, he removed school principals from the teachers' union, which was like removing the heart from a school. The same move in Ontario spawned lost cohesion and morale in staff. He also demolished local school boards, saying the department of education would provide the administrative leadership. Well the department didnt, leaving a huge hole in the chain of command.

At a time when research skills are paramount, he removed the librarian technicians from middle schools, a very regressive move in my opinion. To top it off, he did not cap class sizes, leaving teachers of overly-large classes, and their students, severely disadvantaged.

Democracy took a dive under McNeil. Liberal MLAs did as bidden by their leader, and the cries of constituents were ignored. Transparency did not exist as the media was shut out. As one Halifax journalist said, they want your written questions in advance and promise to respond, but that doesnt mean you get an answer."

So, why the review of the Liberal governments record? The concern I have is that many of the Liberal MLAs began their political run under McNeils tutelage. Its like being a self-taught skier where youve put a lot of bad techniques into your muscle memory. If reelected, will they all of a sudden embrace transparency, respect for constituents, and communication with the media? In short, if reelected, can and will Premier Iain Rankin retrain himself and others to walk the democratic path?

Jane MacNeill

Ben Eoin

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LETTER: Don't dwell on the past N.S. Liberal government but don't forget it about it either | Saltwire - SaltWire Network

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Kevin Carmichael: Second snap election amid a crisis in 18 years pits Conservatives against Liberals in recession response

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Justin Trudeau was hardly the first prime minister to force an election in the midst of a crisis. Stephen Harper, who also was leading a minority government, did the same thing in the autumn of 2008 as the Great Recession was gathering momentum. Harper asked Governor General Michalle Jean to dissolve Parliament on Sept. 7. Legendary Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. dissolved eight days later.

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You know what came next: an economic calamity that wed still be talking about if not for the pandemic. Harper led a greater number of Conservatives to victory in 2008, but not enough to win a majority. He would govern as if he had one, though, and a disenchanted opposition was in no position to get in his way. Harper ran up a big deficit to finance short-term stimulus that helped bring about a recovery and he was rewarded with a majority in 2011.

The Sept. 20 election will be a confidence vote on Trudeaus handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Comparisons with the Great Recession are imperfect. The global financial system froze in 2008 and some of the worlds biggest banks collapsed. This time, the banking system was a firewall when governments shut much of the global economy in 2020 because financial institutions had been ordered a decade ago to keep enough cash on hand to absorb extreme shocks.

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Another difference is the death toll. The COVID-19 recession was caused by the rapid spread of a virus that has so far killed some 4.4 million people. The Great Recession left death in its wake, but not at the scale of the coronavirus, and not in real time.

Harper and Trudeau approached their respective recessions in much the same way, albeit with different degrees of enthusiasm. Harpers budget deficits peaked at about $56.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March 2010, while Trudeau ran up a $314-billion shortfall in the 2020-21 fiscal year.

The Conservative approach meant sacrificing a vigorous recovery to preserve fiscal stability. As the accompanying chart shows, it took three years to get total hours worked back to where they were on the eve of the Great Recession. The COVID-19 crisis wiped out those and subsequent gains in a matter of weeks.

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But the economy should be back to where it was before the pandemic by the end of the year, if not sooner, assuming vaccinations blunt the fourth wave of coronavirus infections. Trudeau will have reversed his recession faster, but at the cost of more debt that could impede the economy in the future. Harper accepted a slower recovery in order to ease the strain on public finances, a decision that made balancing the budget in 2015 possible, but at the expense of shifting the burden of the recovery onto businesses and households.

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Most (but not all) economists tend to prefer Trudeaus approach to crisis fighting. A rapid recovery could avoid the sort of long-time economic and societal scars that were caused by the weak recovery from the Great Recession. Now, voters are about to have their say. Their decision will influence how the Canadian political class confronts the next recession.

Financial Post

Email: kcarmichael@postmedia.com | Twitter: CarmichaelKevin

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Harper vs. Trudeau: This election will be a confidence vote on Liberal-style crisis fighting - Financial Post

Seven per cent would vote for the Bloc Qubcois, which is fielding candidates only in Quebec, while five per cent supported the Greens and two per cent the Peoples Party of Canada.

The online survey of 2,007 Canadians, conducted Aug. 13 to 15 by Leger in collaboration with The Canadian Press, cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered truly random samples.

Trudeau quickly framed the election that began Sunday as a referendum on the party most able to guide the country through the months and years after COVID-19 subsides.

The 36-day campaign, the shortest allowed under the election law, concludes Sept. 20.

Also this

Nova Scotians are heading to the polls today following a midsummer election campaign that was waged as the province started to emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The incumbent Liberals, led by 38-year-old Iain Rankin, tried to capitalize on post-pandemic optimism while preaching fiscal conservatism.

His party, which he took over after replacing Stephen McNeil as leader in February, has been in power since 2013.

The Progressive Conservatives, led by chartered accountant Tim Houston, tried to set themselves apart by unveiling a big-spending platform focused on improving the health-care system.

The New Democrats, led by United Church minister Gary Burrill, campaigned on a traditionally progressive platform that called for a $15 minimum wage, 10 paid sick days for all workers and rent control.

A total of 28 seats are needed to secure a majority in the provinces newly expanded 55-seat legislature.

What we are watching in the U.S.

WASHINGTON _ A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame Monday for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Talibans easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build.

At the White House, Biden called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians gut-wrenching and conceded the Taliban had achieved a much faster takeover of the country than his administration had expected. The U.S. rushed in troops to protect its own evacuating diplomats and others at the Kabul airport.

But the president expressed no second thoughts about his decision to stick by the U.S. commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to end Americas longest war, no matter what.

I stand squarely behind my decision to finally withdraw U.S. combat forces, Biden said, while acknowledging the Afghan collapse played out far more quickly than the most pessimistic public forecasts of his administration. This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated, he said.

Despite declaring the buck stops with me, Biden placed almost all blame on Afghans for the shockingly rapid Taliban conquest.

His grim comments were his first in person to the world since the biggest foreign policy crisis of his still-young presidency.

Emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal, Taliban fighters swept across the country last week and captured the capital, Kabul, on Sunday, sending U.S.-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country.

Biden said he had warned Ghani _ who was appointed Afghanistans president in a U.S.-negotiated agreement _ to be prepared to fight a civil war with the Taliban after U.S. forces left. They failed to do any of that, he said.

What we are watching in the rest of the world

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) _ The Taliban announced Tuesday an amnesty across Afghanistan and urged women to join its government, trying to calm nerves across a nervous capital city that only the day before saw chaos at its airport as people tried to flee their rule.

The comments by Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Talibans cultural commission, represent the first comments on governance from a federal level across the country after their blitz across the country.

While there were no major reports of abuses or fighting in Kabul, many residents have stayed home and remain fearful after the insurgents takeover saw prisons emptied and armories looted. Older generations remember their ultraconservative Islamic views, which included stonings, amputations and public executions during their rule before the U.S-led invasion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The Islamic Emirate doesnt want women to be victims Samangani said, using the militants term for Afghanistan. They should be in government structure according to Shariah law.

He added: The structure of government is not fully clear, but based on experience, there should be a fully Islamic leadership and all sides should join.

Samangani remained vague on other details, however, implying people already knew the rules of Islamic law the Taliban expected them to follow.

Under the Taliban, which ruled in accordance with a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, women were largely confined to their homes. The insurgents have sought to project greater moderation in recent years, but many Afghans remain skeptical.

On this day in 1896

The discovery that led to the Klondike gold rush was made. George Washington Carmack and two Indian companions, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found gold at Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Yukons Klondike River. After news of the strike reached the outside world, thousands of miners poured into the territory. Its estimated more than $100 million in gold was recovered in the region during the next eight years.

In entertainment

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Selma Blair says shes in remission from multiple sclerosis as a result of undergoing a stem cell transplant.

The 49-year-old actor, best known for such movies as Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde and Hellboy, was diagnosed with the disease in 2018.

My prognosis is great. Im in remission, Blair told a Television Critics Association panel on Monday.

She underwent hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation which uses stem cells derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood or umbilical cord blood.

It took about a year after stem cell for the inflammation and lesions to really go down, so I was reluctant to talk about it because I felt this need to be more healed, she said. I dont have any new lesions forming.

According to the Mayo Clinic, multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the protective myelin sheath that covers nerve fibers. It can cause vision loss, pain, fatigue and impaired coordination. Its cause is unknown.

Theres still maintenance, treatment and glitches, and wonderful things, said Blair, who at times spoke in a halting voice on Zoom.

Cognitively, Im very changed and thats been the harder part, she added.

The actor reveals her fight with MS in Introducing, Selma Blair, an intimate documentary directed by Rachel Fleit. It debuts Oct. 15 in theatres and begins streaming Oct. 21 on Discovery+.

ICYMI

SAULNIERVILLE, N.S. _ The chief of Sipeknekatik First Nation was taken in for questioning by federal Fisheries Department officers on Monday, moments after he announced the expansion of his bands self-regulated lobster fishery in St. Marys Bay.

Chief Mike Sack says he was pulled over and arrested by fisheries officers shortly after he held a news conference at the Saulnierville Wharf, in southwestern Nova Scotia. He says he was held at the detachment in Meteghan, N.S., for about 45 minutes and questioned about the fishery before he was released.

Its kind of a pity, he said in a phone interview after he left the detachment, adding that the band had been in conversations with federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan last week about Sipeknekatiks fisheries. Its not very neighbourly.

Debbie Buott-Matheson, a spokesperson for the Fisheries Department, said in an email Monday, fishery officers arrested an individual at the Saulnierville Wharf for alleged violations of the Fisheries Act. As this matter is now under investigation, no further comment will be provided.

Anyone found to be fishing without proper authorization may be subject to enforcement action, she added. Improperly or untagged lobster traps will be hauled and seized.

Before being taken in for questioning, Sack had launched his First Nations lobster fishery _ months ahead of the start to the federally regulated season, adding that he expected Fisheries Department officers to pull some of his bands traps out of the water because they arent licensed by Ottawa.

Sack said his band, located 65 kilometres north of Halifax, issued 13 fishers with so-called treaty fishery licences for boats operating in the provinces southwest. He said he expected up to 20 fishers to participate with 50 traps each.

Federal regulation dictates that the area in question, LFA 34, has a season that runs from the last Monday in November until the end of May. Sack said the plan is for the bands fishers to stop harvesting on Dec. 15. The community says it will operate under the guidelines of its own fisheries-management plan, which Sack has said is based on sound conservation principles.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 17, 2021.

The Canadian Press

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Poll shows slight Liberal lead, N.S. election day : In The News for Aug. 17, 2021 - CHAT News Today