Quotulatiousness

March 30, 2011

Nanos poll for CTV/Globe still shows large Tory lead

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

The latest election poll is from Nanos, conducted for CTV and the Globe and Mail. The numbers show a smaller lead for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, but it’s still ten percent over Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal party:

Nationally, the Conservatives are in front with 38.4 per cent. The Liberals are 10 points behind at 28.7 per cent, followed by the NDP at 19.6 per cent, the Bloc Quebecois at 9.1 per cent and the Greens at 4.1 per cent.

In comparison, a March 15 Nanos survey found the Tories at 38.6 per cent, the Liberals at 27.6 per cent, the NDP at 19.9 per cent, the Bloc at 10.1 per cent and the Greens at 3.8 per cent.

[. . .]

Pollster Nik Nanos said there’s reason for disappointment in the numbers for both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

For the Tories, it shows that so far Stephen Harper’s campaign for a majority mandate is not attracting enough support to actually win a majority of seats when Canadians vote again on May 2.

For the Liberals, Mr. Nanos noted that Michael Ignagtieff’s team might have expected its numbers to improve with the added attention that comes from a campaign, and the fact that they are now running TV ads in heavy rotation.

The Nanos numbers put the Conservatives back down in minority territory, unlike the two previous polls which indicated a majority government.

March 28, 2011

Tory lead still holding in latest poll result

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 15:39

So far, the opposition hasn’t been able to make much headway against that strong Conservative lead:

2011 Election poll results for 28 March

Here’s a summary from Kathryn Blaze Carlson:

The first poll since Saturday’s election call shows Tory support largely unchanged, bringing into question the opposition’s early emphasis on ethics.

Despite a weekend of being hammered for their alleged contempt of Parliament, the Conservatives boast the support of 41% of decided voters — 17 points ahead of the Liberals, who are at 24%. The NDP is at 19%, and the Bloc 10%.

The Forum Research poll also breaks it down by seat count, suggesting that if the election were held today, the Tories would surge from 143 seats to 162 seats, the Liberals would drop 17 seats to 61, the Bloc would rise from 44 to 51 and the NDP would be whittled from 36 seats to 34. The poll, conducted over the weekend via telephone with a random sample of 2,095 voters, is within the range of approximately plus or minus 10 seats for each party.

The seat projections reflect the regional strength of the BQ, who only run candidates in Quebec, and the natural disproportion of first-past-the-post voting.

Update: Publius points out the real root of Canada’s election issues:

Unfortunately neither you, nor any of the party leaders, have the temerity to admit what is actually wrong with Ottawa. Let me give you a hint. It’s not Stephen Harper’s pragmatism. It isn’t Lord Iggy’s incompetence. Not even Jack Layton’s spend till you’re broke ideology. The problem with Ottawa is Quebec. Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois are merely the symptoms. Our national democracy is broken because part of the electorate refuses to participate.

In the 2006 and 2008 federal elections there were 308 seats up for grabs. That’s 75 in Quebec and 233 in the Rest of Canada (ROC). The 2006 election saw the Conservatives win 114 seats in ROC and 10 in Quebec. The Conservatives did better in the ROC in 2008 winning 133 seats and holding on to their seats in Quebec. If we were to remove Quebec’s 75 seats from Parliament a majority government could be formed with 117 seats. On that basis, including only their ROC seats, the Harper Tories would have won a strong minority government in 2006 and a clear majority in 2008. To say, as the opposition parties and the MSM have, that Harper has failed to seal the deal with Canadians is only partially correct.

For all his faults, chronicled in some detail on this blog over the years, Stephen Harper has in fact convinced a critical mass of the interested Canadian electorate of his fitness to lead us. Those who vote for the Bloc Quebecois have declared their disinterest in Canada as a working proposition.

The Bloc Quebecois are not political party in any meaningful sense but merely a pressure group that has won election to parliament. It is because of this we find ourselves in a series of weak hung parliaments. The BQ offers no vision for Canada, only its potential destruction. It’s bargaining position with the other parties in recent parliaments has been of routine blackmail. Vote what is in the best interests of Quebec, or else.

March 26, 2011

What Canada needs is an actually “conservative” party

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:44

Because right now, we’ve got so-called Conservatives wearing Liberal clothing (and Liberals pawing through the NDP’s cast-off pile). There’s no major federal party in Canada that actually pursues fiscally responsible government policies, no matter how much they may talk about the virtues of smaller government.

Shortly after his government’s defeat, Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted to deflect focus back to Tuesday’s budget. The economy, he said, is the number one priority of Canadians and the budget was the key to the country’s economic future. Then he said: “There was nothing in the budget that the opposition could not or should not have supported.” True enough — but what does that say to Canada’s conservatives? Based on the budget, they are now called on to support a Conservative party that has presided over an extravagant full-scale national revival of big government by fiscal expansion.

Only a few days ago, it seems, Canadian politics was abuzz with the possibility of a new ideological era that favoured smaller government and lower taxes, with less waste, more discipline and a determination to cut taxes. There were signs of revolt in British Columbia, a shake-up in Calgary and reform in Toronto, where Mayor Rob Ford captured a staggering 47% of the vote in a town where The Globe and Mail is considered a right-wing propaganda sheet. Ford Nation, they called it.

There is no Harper Nation. After five-plus years in office, the Harper Conservatives have singularly failed to change the Canadian ideological landscape. Instead, Canadian politics changed the Conservatives. In power, they transformed themselves into another basely partisan party that willingly and even eagerly pandered to whatever the political three-ring circus put on display. This week’s budget, in which $2-billion in loose cash was promptly distributed to a score of special interests and political agendas, left in place a $40-billion deficit for 2010 and solidified a $100-billion increase in the national debt over five years.

There’s no threat on the right to force the Conservatives to actually live up to their talk, so they’re free to drift as far into Liberal territory as they like — and they seem to like it a lot — because small-C conservative voters have nowhere else to go.

March 25, 2011

Polling numbers

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:54

The poll numbers will change over the course of the election as muck is raked, accusations are hurled, and reputations are assailed (assuming that the Conservative government is defeated in Parliament later today). The last poll was conducted by IPSOS for Global News:

I’ll try to update this chart as the polls are published. I doubt that the 19% lead the Tories had yesterday will hold up for the first few days of the election campaign, but anything is possible.

Update: As expected, the government has fallen, so the election is on. Tasha Kheiriddin congratulates the media on their success:

And they’re off. In newsrooms across the country, journalists are tossing their Team 2012 shirts on the trash heap, while the Team 2011 folks are collecting their $5 bets. Sure, they could have cashed in on Tuesday, but it’s always prudent to wait for the chickens to actually hatch. Or, in this case, come home to roost. After stoking election fever for months, the media now get to feast on the fruits of their labors: bad plane food, no sleep, and crazy deadlines.

March 23, 2011

Harper government teeters on the edge

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

Tasha Kheiriddin thinks this has been a deliberate trap laid by the Tories and that the opposition have tumbled right into it:

The Foyer of the House of Commons turned into a beehive on speed. Within the next hour came reports that the NDP and Liberals were moving staff into their war room. Mr. Layton, gaunt but with a glint of steel in his eyes, strode stiffly by the CBC booth, leaning on his cane, turned to a group of journalists and smiled: “Looks like an election”. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff tweeted the first slogan of the coming campaign “An out-of-touch budget from an out-of control government.”

But Mr. Ignatieff is dead wrong — on both counts. This is very much an in-control government, which played its cards brilliantly in the face of not one, but two confidence motions this week. By falling on the budget instead of the contempt of Parliament motion, the Tories escape the stigma of being the only government to ever have been found in contempt by the House. This gives the Opposition less mud to throw their way, which is helpful in light of the brewing Carson scandal, and puts the focus back on the economy, the Tories’ campaign issue of choice.

It is also a very in-touch budget — in all the ways that benefit the Conservatives. The Tories have reached out and touched most of their key voter groups: homeowners, families, seniors, the military, and rural Canadians. They ignored less promising sectors of the electorates, including Quebec, though it is likely they are saving a Quebec HST announcement for the campaign. Had they included it in the budget itself, the Bloc would have been force to support it, which would have meant no election — yet another sign that the Tories were more interested in going to the polls than getting a deal.

Lots of pundits have (correctly) called the budget a “boutique”: small but attractive lures for many of the key constituencies, so that the Tories will have lots of opportunities on the campaign trail to characterize the Liberals as “taking away” promised benefits. It may never have been intended to be implemented: it works far too well as a campaign paper.

To the despair of small-c conservatives, the budget does not address the things that matter to that market. As Kelly McParland points out, it’s really a Liberal budget in a blue wrapper:

[The Toronto Star] is a big [Liberal party] supporter. It would like nothing more than to help orchestrate a return of Liberal hegemony to Ottawa. Yet it’s having trouble finding bad things to say about the budget over which the Liberal leader is determined to force an election.

Here are Wednesday’s headlines from The Star:
Page 1: “2011 Federal Budget Highlights: A Sprinkling of Cash for Almost Everyone”
Page 6: “Budget Promises $300 Tax Credit for Family Caregiver”
Page 8: “Tories Blueprint Looks a Shade of Liberal Red”
Page 9: “Low-income Elderly to Get Supplement Boost”
Page 9: “Tories Revive Retrofit Funding”
Page 9: “Job Creation Still Key Priority in Federal Budget”

Yes, the Star managed to editorialize against the budget, arguing it “fails [the] nation’s needs,” but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty could happily stand at the Toronto GO station handing this newspaper to commuters and seeking their support.

March 22, 2011

Starting election watch now

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:55

With the opposition parties unified in their denunciations of the federal budget tabled today by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, we’re now looking at the strong possibility of a May general election:

The minority Conservative government tabled a 2011 budget Tuesday that was quickly rejected by its political opponents for falling short in helping the middle class, setting the stage for an election campaign that could begin any day.

The leaders of the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and NDP said they could not support the budget as presently written — even though Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to appease the left-wing party through a series of modest, symbolic initiatives.

“We’re forced to reject the budget and we are also forced to reject a government that shows so little respect for parliamentary democracy and our democratic institutions,” said Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader.

Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Quebecois Leader, said his party “can’t support what has been offered here.”

And Jack Layton, head of the NDP and viewed as the person most likely to lend the government support, said the budget fell short of NDP expectations.

I have to admit that I’m surprised that the NDP and the Liberals appear to be ready to force an election at this moment: neither party has had much of a “bounce” in recent polls from government scandals (both real and imaginary). Perhaps they’ve got something held in reserve to release during the campaign that they think will cause voters to turn away from the Tories.

Why nobody takes conservative promises too seriously

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

Today is budget day, when federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will be introducing the Conservative budget for 2011. Unless something has suddenly changed in the government’s philosophy, don’t expect anything daring:

First and foremost, the budget should contain a plan for reducing federal spending in real terms over the next four or five years. Mr. Flaherty’s 2010 budget outlined how the federal government intended to restore balance to the federal books by 2015 by holding the line on spending increases to just over 1% a year while praying for a return to robust annual revenue increases. In fact, merely planning to hold the line on spending is never going to be enough. For one thing, the Conservatives have never proven themselves capable of pulling it off. Despite coming to power in 2006 on a message of fiscal restraint, the Tories raised federal program spending by an average of 6% in each of their first three budgets before the worldwide finance crisis of 2008. Since then, they have added $100-billion to the national debt, in large part thanks to stimulus spending of dubious worth.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, as of last Friday, Canada’s debt stood at nearly $563-billion. This means the debt repayments made over the 11 years before the recession began have been wiped out, and that the federal treasury is back to where it was before the Liberals’ then-finance minister Paul Martin brought down his austerity budget in 1995.

Since the Tories took power five years ago, program spending has expanded by nearly 40% and the federal civil service has grown by nearly 20%. We’re sorry, but we just don’t trust a government with a track record like the Tories’ to be able to regain budget balance simply by holding the line on new spending.

They can promise all sorts of things, but what they seem best at doing is pretending not to be “conservative” at all.

The government may fall, as the opposition are calling for even higher spending on “universities, home care, daycare, unemployment, seniors and Quebec”. This may work to the Conservatives’ advantage as they’re (temporarily) riding high in the opinion polls, so they might be able to win a majority if an election is forced on them over this budget. Of course, the opposition can read the polls too, so they may not be as eager to throw Stephen Harper an opportunity to win an easy victory.

Update: Well, the budget was tabled in the House, the opposition parties all rejected it “as it stands”, and the prime minister has stated they will not accept any amendments. For Thursday’s performance in the Ottawa Little Theatre, the budget will get first reading, which means the first opportunity for the government to be defeated . . . which means a May general election.

“He is kind of like a rock star, a nerdy professor, and your crazy uncle rolled into one”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Andrew Foy tries to place Ron Paul in the context of the modern Republican Party:

In his recent editorial “The Fighters vs. the Fixers,” appearing on National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg discussed what I suspect is his crop of contenders for the upcoming election: Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee. Considering that Paul smoked all of these candidates in the 2011 CPAC straw poll, where he garnered 30% of the vote, it was an odd choice to leave him out, and even more so when you account for the fact that Goldberg’s recently edited book Proud to be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation featured several essays in which the authors expressed strong libertarian points of view.

Ah, but that CPAC straw poll was explained away as “Paultards” packing the event, which no other candidate would ever do, so the poll result was therefore invalid. Oh, and lots of chatter that Paul supporters would not be welcome to the next CPAC.

. . . Paul is an outspoken advocate of Austrian economics. Without being an economist myself, I would say that this economic school of thought argues against econometric models, state planning, bailouts, economic stimulus, and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. One of the hallmarks of Austrian economics, for which Hayek won a Nobel Prize, is the view that central banks create asset bubbles and hence the business cycle. Austrian economics predicted the recent housing collapse and economic recession when the mainstream economists and politicians, to whom we’re still wedded, were telling us that everything was “A-okay.”

In a 2007 address to the American Economic Association, Bernanke proclaimed, “The greatest external benefits of the Fed’s supervisory activities are those related to the institution’s role in preventing and managing financial crises. In other words, the Fed can prevent most crises and manage the ones that do occur.” A year later, we were mired in the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. While the great majority of politicians today (Democrats and Republicans) are happy to heed the advice and inflationary policies of the Fed, such as QE2, Paul is a lone voice in the wilderness crying foul. Conservatives should welcome his dissent.

March 21, 2011

More re-Volting details on GM’s electric car

Filed under: Economics, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:20

Patrick Michaels looks at the Chevy Volt:

. . . GM was desperate for customers for what they perceived would be an unpopular vehicle before one even hit the road. It had hoped to lure more if buyers subtracted the $7,500 from the $41,000 sticker price. Instead, as Consumer Reports found out, the car was very pricey. The version they tested cost $43,700 plus a $5,000 dealer markup (“Don’t worry,” I can hear the salesperson saying, “you’ll get more than that back in your tax credit!”), or a whopping $48,700 minus the credit.

This is one reason that Volt sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February. GM announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years. Who is going to buy all these cars?

Another reason they aren’t exactly flying off the lots is because, well, they have some problems. In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)

But not to worry! They’ve found someone to buy half of the total Volt production:

Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.

Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama’s Economic Advisory Board?

March 20, 2011

A different way to visualize the proposed US budget cuts

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

Jon sent me an interesting link on a different way to visualize the relative size of the proposed budget cuts:

That struck me as a pretty good analogy. I wondered: if you do the math, what part of a Big Mac Extra Value Meal would a $6 billion budget cut represent?

The arithmetic is pretty simple, due to the extensive nutrition information that McDonalds makes available online. A Big Mac Extra Value Meal has three components: a Big Mac, a large order of french fries, and a medium soda. The McDonalds site tells us that a Big Mac has 540 calories, a large fries has 570 and a medium Coke has 210, for a total of 1,320 calories.

Meanwhile, the federal budget is currently around $3.8 trillion, which means that a $6 billion cut represents one 633rd of the total. What would be an equivalent cut in a Big Mac Extra Value Meal?

One variable is not readily available online; that is, how many french fries are there in a large order? To answer that question, I went to a nearby McDonalds at lunch time, paid for a large order of fries, and counted them. There were 87. (I counted fries regardless of size, but did not count the hard bits in the bottom of the container.)

This allows us to complete the calculation. If there are 570 calories in a large order of fries, and 87 fries per order, each french fry, on the average, contains 6.5 calories. One 633rd of the total calorie content of a Big Mac Extra Value Meal is 1,320/633, or 2.1 calories. That equals almost exactly one-third of an average sized french fry.

March 18, 2011

Ignoring death threats to politicians (but only on the right)

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:16

An interesting article at the Huffington Post on the relative media silence on the spate of death threats against Wisconsin politicians:

Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the death threats against Republican politicians in Wisconsin?

Try to set aside whatever biases or preconceptions you might have for a moment and ask yourself why death threats against politicians aren’t considered national news, especially in the wake of the all too fresh shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and other bystanders. And there hasn’t just been one death threat, but a number of them.

Here’s an example and it’s real. According to Wisconsin State Department of Justice, authorities have found a suspect who admitted to sending the following email:

I want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and your republican dictators have to die. This is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, this isn’t enough. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message. So we have built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) the 8 of you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. The 8 includes the 7 senators and the dictator. We feel that it’s worth our lives becasue we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. Goodbye ASSHOLE!!!!

After the Giffords shooting, authorities have to take this sort of threat seriously. The media should too, even if the disturbed person who sent that email was motivated by exactly the kind of rhetoric that’s been used by many liberals against GOP officials over and over again during the Madison protests. And there are more threats floating around the internet, in varying degrees of scary and credible.

The Google search for the string “Wisconsin death threats” only returned 704 results for me this morning, and the only major media outlets represented on the first page were the Chicago Sun-Times and Fox News.

March 17, 2011

Rick Mercer on “the Harper Government”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:02

Police and fire unions threaten to “boycott” businesses that support Wisconsin governor

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

You’ve got a nice office here, guv. Shame if anything were to happen to it, y’know?

Here is another reason public unions should not be allowed to collectively bargain with politicians running a local or state government. Union leadership — including those from law enforcement and firefighters — have sent letters out to local businesses demanding they publicly oppose the efforts of Wisconsin’s legislature and governor or face the consequences.

Not only are they suggesting they publicly oppose the fiscal-sanity measures in Wisconsin, they are flat out telling them they will publicly boycott businesses who do not proactively do so. From James Taranto’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

In the letter to Wisconsin businessmen, however, we see why so-called collective bargaining is particularly corrupting to the police. Although the letter explicitly threatens only an economic boycott, when it is written on behalf of the police — of those on whom all citizens depend to protect their safety — it invariably raises the prospect of another kind of boycott. Can a businessman who declines this heavy-handed “request” be confident that the police will do their job if he is the victim of a crime — particularly if the crime itself is in retaliation for his refusal to support “the dedicated public employees who serve our communities”?

LauraW clarifies the message here:

We’re the Police and Firefighters Unions.

If you don’t accede to our demand, we’ll put you on The Naughty List. And, um….boycott you. That’s our threat. We’ll boycott you. That’s all.

Right.

…did we forget to mention that we are cops and firefighters?
Just checking. Making sure you caught that.

H/T to Jon for the link.

March 9, 2011

“It’s the libertarians who push this crap”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:22

Dave Weigel tries to find the answer to the burning question “Why do conservatives hate trains so much?”:

But it could hardly make less sense to liberals. What, exactly, do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have against trains? Seriously, what? Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism”?

“You need to distinguish between Republicans and conservatives and libertarians when you look at this,” says William Lind, the director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. “It’s the libertarians who push this crap.”

Libertarians, of course, have no problem with trains (see, e.g., Atlas Shrugged). They do have a problem with federal spending on transportation, as do many Republicans. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957; Amtrak took over the rails in 1971. Since then, conservatives will sing the praises of private rail projects but criticize federally funded projects that don’t meet the ideal. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., for example, pushed a high-speed rail initiative through Congress in 2008. By 2010, he was denouncing “the Soviet-style Amtrak operation” that had “trumped true high-speed service” in Florida. In 2011, as the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, he is interested in saving the Orlando-Tampa project by building 21 miles between the airport and Disney World. This is about 21 miles farther than local Republicans want to go.

March 7, 2011

UN shows true colours again on eve of International Women’s Day

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

As a self-parody, the UN can’t possibly go much lower than this, can they?

On the eve of International Women’s Day, which celebrates its 100th anniversary on March 8, the United Nations has delivered a serious insult to women around the world: On March 4, the UN appointed Iran to its Commission for the Status of Women.

Iran has an abysmal record on women’s rights. Its police can arrest women for getting a suntan, wearing too much makeup, or dressing “immodestly.” One of its religious leaders made headlines around the world last year when he blamed women’s immodesty for causing a series of earthquakes. In 2003, Iranian state thugs raped, tortured and killed Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi because she photographed a Tehran prison.

As a sign of its relative unimportance, I only just realized that I didn’t even have a tag for the UN. That’s a pretty strong indication that they’ve lapsed from view.

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