Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Thomas Walkom sees Stephen Harper's approval of dove hunting as an ideal metaphor for the gratuitous violence of his government:

The wildlife service also estimates that new hunting rules will result in about 18,000 Ontario doves being shot each year. But, say hunt aficionadas, so what? There are plenty more.

As the Conservatives would tell you: This is our world. Other species are born into it at their own risk.

To Canada’s governing party, killing doves is a metaphor for sound thinking, fiscal sobriety and doughnut-shop values. It is where the Harperites want to be.
...
To reconcile these competing metaphors is not easy. In Israel, Canada’s prime minister is the dove’s friend. He supports this wonderful bird root and branch. His ideals are lofty, his vision clear.

But back home in Canada, his relationship to the dove is quite different. Back home, Stephen J. Harper is the dove’s sworn enemy. Back home, his government wants to see a good chunk of these damned birds dead.

- Reuters reports that Switzerland will soon be voting on the type of universal income security that's been all too thoroughly excluded from discuss by the chattering classes in Canada.

- But at home, the Cons are still the main obstacle looming in the way of even modest CPP reforms to make sure that seniors have a reasonable standard of living.

- Erin Weir reminds us of the need for fair royalties to ensure that the oil industry can't siphon billions of dollars worth of public resources out of Saskatchewan while paying as little as penny on the dollar.

- David McGrane's Canadian Social Democracy Study looks to offer plenty of interesting discussion to come about the recent history and future of the NDP.

- Finally, David Oswald Mitchell's presentation on the grammar of social change is well worth a view: