Yet more politics

Lots of interesting political news today.

First off: the Globe reported that Prime Minister Stephen Harper referred to Quebec as a "nation within a united Canada". This has produced the usual heated discussion that occurs whenever the topic of Quebec is brought up.

For someone like me - an anglophone from Toronto - the whole question of Quebec as a "nation" is difficult to get a handle on because I don't know what the French-language equivalent of "nation" is. Does "nation" refer to the people of Quebec and their traditions, or an actual physical nation-state with boundaries?

For what it's worth, I believe that Quebec is obviously a unique political entity with its own culture, heritage and tradition. Equally obviously, Quebec is a part of Canada. Canada has never existed without Quebec, and Quebec would not function as effectively if it were forced to go it alone.

I think that Quebecois humorist Yvon Deschamps probably put it best: he once claimed that what Quebec wanted was a strong independent Quebec within a strong united Canada.


The news out of Iraq is not exactly good: the Globe reported today that this October was the deadliest month yet for civilians there, as 3709 were killed. (To put this in perspective: about 3000 people died in the 9/11 attacks.) This tops the previous record of 3590 killed in July.

There seems to be no good potential outcome to all of this. It doesn't look like the U.S. is going to be able to accomplish what it set out to achieve in Iraq. If they don't pull out, there will be more civilian and U.S. military deaths. If they do pull out, it's likely that the most ruthless of the groups trying to seize control of the country will wind up in charge, because that's what usually happens. Either way, life for the ordinary people of Iraq is going to be just plain awful.

From what I've read, the Republican administration were guilty of a failure of imagination. Did they really believe that the Iraqis would welcome the incoming Americans as liberators, and that everything would turn magically wonderful once Saddam was overthrown? Or are there people in charge who don't really care what happens to the Iraqi people, as long as the oil keeps flowing and large corporations get their revenue? Is there anybody in the Bush administration who is that callous?