Israeli lobby group has begun to pay students to agree with Israeli policy

A pro-Israeli lobby group, has begun a program to pay Canadian and American university and college students to agree with Israeli policy and to voice pro-Israeli sentiment in classroom discussion, and in grassroots organization with other campus groups.

The program, organized by the pro-Israel lobby group Stand With Us Campus, offers $1000 per year to pro-Israeli students or to students who may be enticed to go along in order to receive the prize of $1000 (source).  In exchange for this money, students are to, in Stand With Us Campus‘s own words, “build relationships with their campus groups and individuals” to influence discourse in favour of Israel and then (again, in their words) “report back to SWU campus staff to evaluate program effectiveness and network among themselves to ensure consistency.” (source)

So the next time you hear an undergraduate  student in class claiming that Israel is only defending itself when the Palestinian/Israeli  death toll is more than 14-to-1 in Israel’s favour, just think:  he or she might actually be getting paid to say (and believe) such arguments.

According to Stand With Us Campus‘s literature, so far, the following Canadian and American universities and colleges have a student or students  (or “Fellows”, as they call them) who are being paid to advocate Israeli policy in their discussions and in their extra-curricular campus activity.

(Canadian schools listed in bold) 

Columbia University
Cornell University
Florida Atlantic University
Florida International University
Indiana University
Johns Hopkins University
Lawrence University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
McGill University
Miami Dade College
Northern Illinois University
NYU
Queens College (CUNY)
Rice University
San Diego State University
San Francisco State University
San Jose State University
Santa Monica College
State University of New York at New Paltz
Swarthmore College
Syracuse University
The George Washington University
The University of Texas at Austin
Towson University
University of Arizona
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Riverside
University of California, San Diego
University of Florida
University of Michigan
University of New Mexico
University of North Texas
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Vermont
University of Victoria
University of Windsor
Wayne State University
(source)

~~~

Note: The images used in this piece are curtosy of Information Clearing House‘s photographic archive of images of the most recent Israeli incursion into Lebannon (the one that was planned months before to await provocation).  WARNING:  If you click the above link to Information Clearing House, the images you will see are much more graphic than the images included in this post.  The images selected for inclusion above were selected because they were generally much less gruesome than the worst of the images of Israeli attacks.

Top 100 Canadian political blogs

Here’s a sort of ‘top 100’ list for the Canadian political blogs which I compiled for fun (I know, I’m at work right now and I’m bored and I have a really distorted sense of ‘fun’). Actually, the idea wasn’t really mine, I stole the idea from a post that Greg from democraticspace.com did back in 2006 and I decided to expand it to a top 100 list, take out the now defunct sites, and update the rest.

Just a few caveats to keep in mind when going over this list. First, about one third of all blogspot blogs that I entered into alexa.com‘s traffic analysis generated no data. For some reason though, all other blog hosts such as wordpress (and all people who host their own blog) seemed to register just fine. So, if you don’t show up on the list, don’t take it personally, it’s possible that alexa just doesn’t have data on you. Second, I believe that the traffic ranking at Alexa is based on the past 4 months or so, so if you’ve been taking the summer off (as I believe Rick Mercer has) then your traffic rank will probably reflect that more than your normal traffic flow. Third, this isn’t an exhaustive list. What I’ve done is taken Greg’s list, deleted all the blogs which no longer exist, and then simply went down the list of blogs at Bound By Gravity, starting at the top, until I filled in enough empty slots to equal 100.

If I’ve left out some blogs that generate data on Alexa.com (and are, say, under the 7,000,000 mark) and you’d like them included in the list, feel free to comment below with the Alexa url of the blog traffic overview and I’ll add it as soon as I get a chance.

.

Canadian Political Blogger rank. Site name (& url) / site’s global Alexa ranking

1. Paul Wells / 70,893
2. Small Dead Animals /133,987
3. Matthew Good /187,454
4. Le Blogue du Québec / 210,363 (blogue francophone)
5. The Politic / 274,126
6. Progressive Bloggers / 283,480
7. Steve Janke / 318,783
8. Antonia Zerbisias / 324,154
9. Garth Turner / 356,627
10. Blogs Canada / 378,886
11. Blogging Tories / 396,832
12. Damian Penny / 455,529
13. Vues d’ici / 460,543
14. Vive le Canada / 461,727
15. Amériquébec / 469,643 (blogue francophone)
16. Emotion Creator / 484,553
17. Andrew Coyne / 551,817
18. Warren Kinsella / 593,125
19. CalgaryGrit / 614,119
20. Western Standard / 664,824
21. Ken Chapman / 683,125
22. Samantha Burns / 732,689
23. Gen X at 40 / 735,226
24. Werner Patels / 738,070
25. Joseph Facal / 821,472 (blogue francophone)
26. Montreal Simon / 840,565
27. Stephen Taylor / 850,234
28. Colby Cosh / 889,912
29. Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations / 911,369
30. Bound by Gravity / 912,488
31. Dust my Broom / 939,419
32. Abandoned Stuff / 949,762
33. Scott’s DiaTribes / 954,036
34. Canadian Cynic / 1,013,469
35. David Akin / 1,070,642
36. James Bow / 1,104,491
37. Getting it Right / 1,113,156
38. Girl on the Right / 1,166,381
39. Red Tory / 1,175,715
40. Far and Wide / 1,360,164
41. Rick Mercer / 1,372,926
42. April Reign / 1,387,411
43. Prairie Wrangler / 1,440,822
44. The Galloping Beaver / 1,455,318
45. La Revue Gauche / 1,486,069
46. Jordon Cooper / 1,518,839
47. Canadian Cerberus / 1,553,403
48. Buckdog / 1,591,003
49. Big Blue Wave / 1,715,540
50. Daveberta / 1,762,705
51. The Blog Quebecois / 1,772,550
52. Liblogs.ca / 1,870,127
53. Jason Cherniak / 1,929,394
54. Big City Lib / 1,960,969
55. Larry Borsato / 2,065,636
56. Section 15 / 2,065,958
57. The Monarchist / 2,066,261
58. The London Fog / 2,067,851
59. Jay Currie / 2,190,102
60. Stageleft / 2,238,667
61. Green Bloggers (Canada) / 2,252,729
62. democraticSPACE.com / 2,391,081
63. Quebec Politique / 2,575,012 (blogue francophone)
64. Un homme en colère / 2,653,297 (blogue francophone)
65. Urban Refugee / 2,661,034
66. Accidental Deliberations / 2,717,441
67. Devin Johnston.ca / 2,718,187
68. Idealistic Pragmatist / 2,725,501
69. My Blahg / 2,800,670
70. Uncorrected Proofs / 2,891,152
71. Adam Daifallah / 3,018,846
72. Political Staples / 3,222,345
73. Marginalized Action Dinosaur / 3,302,191
74. Rootleweb / 3,327,246
75. Dr. Roy’s Thoughts / 3,622,245
76. The Vanity Press / 3,622,958
77. Crawl Across the Ocean / 3,625,835
78. JimBobbySez / 3,632,287
79. Bill Doskoch / 3,637,532
80. Verbena-19 / 3,672,713
81. The Spirit of Man / 3,787,343
82. Cathie from Canada / 3,789,273
83. Peace, Order and Good Government, eh? / 3,794,370
84. Odd Thoughts / 3,796,069
85. Canadiana’s Place / 4,020,291
86. Unrepentant Old Hippie / 4,284,573
87. A BCer in TO / 4,802,829
88. Dawg’s Blawg / 4,817,302
89. Red Jenny / 4,838,538
90. East-End Underground / 4,874,982
91. The Cylinder / 5,185,136
92. Maxwell’s House / 5,533,134
93. WingNuterer / 5,563,968
94. Woman at Mile 0 / 5,610,425
95. Begin Each Day… / 5,623,330
96. HarperBizarro / 5,626,895
97. Liberal Catnip / 5,776,892
98. Antagoniste / 5,797,151 (blogue francophone)
99. Blogging Dippers / 6,135,616
100. Fuddle-Duddle / 6,238,129

Polling resource & political images updated

I know I’ve been AWOL for a while, but rest assured, it’s purely because I’ve been in the process of working over 43 hours per week and trying to set up a new apartment.  Rest assured, that I haven’t gone anywhere and that Paulitics will be back to its former glory in the near future.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve greatly expanded the data on the provincial breakdown section of the Paulitics Polling Resource.  The Polling Resource now features a 6 month history of poll results at the provincial level as well as providing the ever famous Paulitics rolling five poll graphs.  Take a look at it and let me know what everybody thinks.

I’ve also done a large update to the Political Images resource, for those interested.

graphs showing party support by province

I have recently decided to expand the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource to include a long-term graph showing a rolling poll average for each province (or region).  Here is the preliminary data for all provincial/regional polls conducted by all polling firms in the past 6 months.   The graphs are rolling averages so, unlike here, it is actually possible to see a clear picture of what’s happening.

Here are the trends in party support for the past six month for Ontario, Quebec, BC, Alberta, Atlantic Canada and the Prairies.

Paulitics Polling Resource: Tories’ surge halted

With the latest Decima poll released earlier this week, there’s now evidence to suggest that any momentum towards recovery which the Tories had enjoyed only a few weeks ago, is now gone.

The Tories began their slow slide down from the 38% range in the Paulitics Polling Resource around April of this year.  However right when their rolling average trend line slammed into the comparatively stagnant Liberal rolling average trend line, they bounced back from just over 32% back up to 36%.

It is this latest rebound which has effectively been halted and the Tories are now dropping faster or at least as fast as any party has dropped in the polls in the past 12 months.  The only two other instances of parties dropping approximately this fast in the polls in the last 12 months have been: 

(1) The New Democrats between November 13 and December 13 2006 who dropped 18% to 12% in rolling averages; and

(2) The Liberals between mid-December 2006 and early March 2007 who dropped 10 points from 38% to 28%.

Now this does not mean that the Tories are in a crisis or anything.  Their rate of decent may be greater at this point than either the Liberals or the New Democrats’ lines were in these two previous times, but the Tories’ fall hasn’t been going on for very long.

Long and short of it is:  Things are definitely interesting, but I wouldn’t want to put money on what will happen by the end of the summer let alone next week.

With this latest poll (and the Leger poll which I hadn’t previously included in my master list), the Paulitics Polling Resource now stands like this:

For National Results and long term trends in party support, click here.

For a breakdown of party support at the provincial and regional level, click here.

Paulitics Polling Resource: Quebec highly unstable

Even before Gilles Duceppe’s recent flip flop over departing the federal scene and making a run for the PQ and then chosing to stay put, the Paulitics polling resource demonstrates that Quebec was already the province with by far the most instability in terms of public opinion.  Thus, Quebec provincial politics are sure to remain very interesting in the near future.

At the national level, the Paulitics Polling Resource shows the NDP and the Liberals with momentum while the Conservatives are still in decline, albeit slower than before.

Also of interest is the fact that the most popular party in Canada at this time can only count on the support of 1/3 of Canadians.

The Paulitics Polling Resource has the parties tracking as follows:

For the Paulitics Polling Resource and long-term federal trend lines, click here

For the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource, click here

At the provincial level, we see high instability in Quebec even before Duceppe’s recent gaffe.  Based on the most recent polling, the Paulitics Provincial/Regional breakdown shows that voter migration is by far the greatest in Quebec with more than 1 in 5 Quebecois having changed their vote preference since the last election.

The following chart demonstrates party support instability in each of the provinces and regions tracked in the Polling Resource:

QC	22.3%
BC	13.8%
Atlantic	12.0%
Prairies	11.5%
ON	10.7%
Alberta	1.5%

As discussed here, the NDP are up impressive amounts in Quebec, and the Liberals and the Conservatives are experiencing highly irregular pollinging numbers.  So it seems as though Quebec is up for grabs for just about any party.

The question is, what effect, if any, Gilles Duceppe’s recent flip flop will have on this highly unstable situation.

Paulitics Polling Resource: Greens surge, Tories collapse

The latest Decima poll released (available here) shows some promising news for the New Democrats in the province of Quebec, for the Greens nationally and juxtaposes this with some less-than-promising news for the Tories, who appear to be in a free-fall. 

With this poll (and two other polls, one by Ipsos-Reid and another by Strategic), the Paulitics Polling Resource national trend lines show the party standings in flux.  The parties are currently at:

For the long-term trend lines of national party support, click here

For the breakdown of party support for all the regions/provinces, click here

——————————————————— 

Points of interest:

First, the Greens.

Less than three weeks ago today, the Greens were in the midst of a long nosedive from their previous high of 10.4 % which they had achieved on February 28th, 2007 in the Paulitics Polling Resource.

Three weeks ago, the Greens were tracking in a downward spiral fighting it out with the Bloc for (a decreasingly popular) last place.  However, as is always the case in politics, three weeks is a long time.

In three short weeks, the Greens have gone from their worst polling results since January 2nd to an all-time high in the Paulitics weighted average trend line of 10.8%.

However, it is worth noting that nothing here takes account of Elizabeth May’s recent gaffe (here) where she repeated a previous comparison comparing Canada’s environmental policy to the appeasement of the Nazis. 

Second, the New Democrats.

The New Democrats are holding steady nationally from their recent jump in the polls, however were the real story is with them is in the most unlikely of places:  Quebec.

Chantal Hébert, in her recent book “French Kiss”, called Quebec the province of “heaven and hell” for the New Democrats.  This was due to their seeming inability to break into the province in any substantial way all the while the province is, empirically-speaking, the most social democratic and thus the most sympathetic to the NDP’s putative ideals.

However, if one takes a look at the Paulitics Regional/Provincial breakdown of party support, one sees that, arguably, the largest increase of any party in any region or province is that enjoyed by the NDP in Quebec.

While this has garnered — so far as I can tell — a total of zero column inches in the mainstream media, it is worth noting here that the Conservatives were considered a joke in Quebec during the last election until the press began reporting on their jump in Quebec when they reached the low to mid teens (see polls between Dec. 30 – Jan. 5 here) in a Decima, an Ipsos-Reid and an SES poll.

So, long story short, are the NDP on the verge of a Quebec breakthrough?  Most likely not.  However their data in Quebec is enough in my opinion to merit the kind of media coverage which is ultimately the key element which causes electoral breakthroughs.  However this kind of media coverage does not appear to be likely to happen anytime in the near future.

Lastly, the Conservatives.

The month of April was a bad month for the Conservatives.  From the end of March to May 1st, the Conservatives have dropped 5 points in the Paulitics Polling Resource.  If they experience another month like this, they will be back down into the 20-30% range from which they emerged after the 2004 election. 

A detailed analysis of Canadian public opinion: NDP up significantly

Whenever a dramatic new poll is released like yesterday’s Decima poll (available here) , it’s always a good idea to actually look at a detailed anlaysis of public opinion before the various blogging partisan hacks chime in.

So, before we start hearing from the Tories, Liberals, New Democrats or Greens, let’s take a look at what the polling trend lines show.

The last update to the Paulitics Polling Resource (which was yesterday) was posted just hours before Decima released their poll which suggested, among other things, the collapse of Tory support in Ontario and a nation-wide surge for the NDP.

The Decima poll had the party support as follows:

Con: 30    Lib: 29    NDP: 18    Green: 11    Bloc: 8

If this poll is indicative of future trends (and keep in mind that this poll doesn’t take account of the Tories’ recent embarrassments this week), then the political landscape is about to become very interesting.

So what does this poll and the Paulitics Polling Resource suggest about the political landscape?

Firstly, and most importantly, while the Conservatives are still tied with their 2006 vote results in the key province of Ontario, this latest Decima poll puts the Conservatives down 12% from the previous Decima poll and down 15% from the more recent Ipsos-Reid poll’s Ontario results.

Conversely, this poll has the NDP’s support up 10% in Ontario.  While they are still below their 2006 results in the Paulitics rolling-rive poll average in the province of Ontario, this poll brought their average up significantly.

Secondly, as was discussed here,  the NDP had previously been down badly in Atlantic Canada, however with the intervening few polls which have been released, the NDP has risen back up to be statistically tied with their 2006 vote result and they accomplished this in a relatively short period of time.

Thirdly, both the Liberals and the Conservatives are either stagnant or in decline in both nationally and in every region or province surveyed.  The Liberals, who were once in the process of making statistically significant gains in Quebec and Alberta only a few weeks ago, are now statistically tied to their 2006 election results across the board in every province and region.  A similar story is true of the Conservatives, except for the fact that they are outside of the margin of error with their drop in Atlantic Canada.

Lastly, the provincial breakdown for the Greens is not favourable.  The Greens made impressive gains in both BC, but perhaps most surprisingly, in Ontario as well.  However, the near-double-digit gains have evaporated and the Greens are now within the margin of error in BC.

The new, updated, national results according to the Paulitics rolling and weighted averages are:

For the long-term trend lines of national party support, click here

For the breakdown of party support for all the regions/provinces, click here

Paulitics Polling Resource Updated: NDP up slightly, all others stalled

Using the polling results from exactly one month ago, it is now apparent that the Canadian public, whose opinions, as discussed here, were so erratic only a month ago, seem to have settled down considerably.

Since March 25th, the Tories have stalled and have not been able to break the 38% barrier.  As of this writing, the Tories have not approached majority government territory in the since early summer 2006.

The Liberals, after having dropped badly to 27% in the Paulitics trend lines during April, have recovered to their now standard 31% level which they have not been able to break above since this past February.

The Greens, having surged briefly above the 10% in the Politics trend lines in late February, have now dropped by statistically significant margins back down to the 8% level they were once so jubilant to break for the first time back this past January.

The Bloc is possibly in the worst shape of all political parties (stay tuned for details on this front: I’ll be updating the Paulitics Regional/Provincial Polling Resource in the coming days).

Lastly, the NDP, is still pretty anemic.  While their rolling trend lines have been stalled since earlier this month, they are nonetheless the one party that can boast any even remotely long-term gains.  Since late March, with only one exception, the NDP have either gone up or have stood fast at their existing levels of support in each of the seven latest polls covered in the Paulitics Polling Resource.

Thus, the party standings are now:

Click here for the Paulitics Polling Resource