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Resolution 181 of the United Nations. Now, under that resolution Jerusalem wasn't supposed to go to either the Jews or the Muslims, but whatever might have happened will never be known because the Muslims immediately attacked and that was that.

My initial response to Trump's announcement was to shake my head and sigh. The dumb man was bloviating again in an attempt to distract, without the slightest care of what trouble that might cause. What's the point of it, after all? It changes nothing. It will not help the situation, only earn the Americans enmity from a lot of Muslims and make it much harder for them to even pretend to act as honest brokers for peace. Not that that was going anywhere anyway... So I wish yellow face had kept his mouth shut on this. It accomplishes nothing. That being said, there is no question Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and always will be as long as Israel exists. That is the cold hard reality. Anyone who doubts it is either lying to themselves or is an idiot. As to justification. Israel is the ancient capital of the Jews, but that is not really justification. The Romans owned it for a thousand years or more. Does that mean it's an Italian city? The Muslims took the city away, and then swept out destroying other Christian cities and lands or forcibly converting the survivors by sword-point, eventually even slaughtering and raping their way to Constantinople (with a lot of help from the Fourth Crusade, ironically, which permanently weakened Constantinople and Rome). The same people who castigate the west for occupying native lands and 'cultural genocide' make no mention of the far harsher invasion and slaughter of the Christian lands and peoples in Egypt, Syria and Turkey by the Muslims. Instead they now use charts to show how most of the population afterward was Muslim to show that they deserve the land! Jerusalem was pretty much a backwater, supremely unimportant to the Muslim world for most of its existence, as was the entire region of Palestine. Regardless of what empire ruled it was nothing more than a backwater. To suggest, as some of the Jew haters have, that Jews moving there in large number was somehow illegitimate is astonishingly hypocritical given the same people who make such suggestions grow outraged at any similar suggestion with regard to immigrants to Canada or the United States - including the illegals and their descendants. The fact is they did move there, and they were legally given control of the area. Another fine example of hypocrisy is how certain people embrace the UN as the arbiter of all that is just and legal in the world - except in this case - where they say it shouldn't count. Not that these people have anything against Jews, of course. Phht. Jerusalem only assumed importance when it became Israel's capital. Then the Arabs all thought it was desperately important - for some reason. Jordan annexed East Jerusalem and declared it its second capital, then expelled the Jews, heavily persecuted the Christians so most left, desecrated Jewish holy sites and treated the Christian ones with only slightly less contempt. When Jordan attacked West Jerusalem in 1967 the Jews kicked their asses and took the rest of the city over. Tough noogies Muslims. You lost. Deal with it. To suggest Muslims have some sort of superior right to Jerusalem is to sanctify right by conquest. Yet the same people who make such a suggestion explicitly reject the right of ownership by conquest when its Jews doing the conquering. For some reason. Not that they've got anything against Jews, of course. So pardon me if I find all the 'outrage' from the likes of Prog lefties in the West (not that they've got anything against Jews, of course), or corrupt autocratic Muslim dictators like Erdogan to be nothing more than escaping anal gases - and just about as worthy of admiration.

Yup, this guy has been everywhere. Next he will be trying to tell us that he actually went to the moon and back. Just saying.

Go'way little Johnny, we grownups are talking now.

They were not by our standards but I say they were much more civilized than the natives. Europe evolved out of the dark ages, these people were practically still neolithic. Yes Europeans had the technology, machinery, weaponry but they also had the basic morals. In fact terrible violence has been committed throughout history by all parties, including among the highly mythical Noble Savages. Looking back in time you can see they had the same problems that we still have today... we still need to fight back and kill the barbarians, sometimes.

so to get the discussion back on topic, do you think there is a point to a lunar base, other than to simply have one?

guys, let's get back on topic. This seems to have turned into a "Canada v. USA" thread.

Well, except for straight white men, of course. They're the oppressors. I see Blacks are rioting again in St. Louis because a judge, after examining the evidence, has concluded that a white cop that shot a black drug dealer did not commit murder. This goes against the narrative created on social media by the outraged black victims groups, of which there are now a myriad. That poor heroin dealer, racing away from police and ramming police cars to get away is a victim of evil white men! Halifax has caved to a shrill group of whiny aboriginal 'victim's' and their progressive fellow travelers in shrouding a statue of its own founder. The premier of Nova Scotia demands the statue itself be removed, while the nearby town of Kent has removed his name on their bridge. His crime, apparently, was fighting back against savage Mc'maq attacks on white people. Damn white people! In fact, a huge and burgeoning native victims industry exists, dedicated to ensuring all white people apologize repeatedly for everything bad that ever happened to natives, admit nothing was natives' faults, and pay huge sums to make things up to them. In BC, some woman is suing UBC for not expelling a man she accused of sexually assaulting her, which caused her such anguish and stress that she says they've discriminated against her due to 'mental disability', ie, the anguish and stress. She reported it to the police, who declined to lay charges, citing a lack of evidence. Evidence apparently, should not be considered necessary for a university to take action against any man a woman claims was cruel to her. She's so anguished she keeps showing up in major newspapers, posing dramatically, always looking very victimy. All women on campus are a victim of rape culture, you know, or so the womens victim industry would have it. Meanwhile, academics wring their hands about the lack of women getting STEM professorships. Since women are obviously victims, this must be due to male sexism, even though most women don't seem much interested in taking STEM courses at all. Meanwhile our harping media people are wailing about the rise in 'hate attacks' on Muslims, despite the numbers being miniscule, and have already dubbed all Muslims, like all minorities, victims of evil white hatred and discrimination. They're the newest victim group adopted by progressives, those that aren't busy desperately trying to build support for a law executing anyone who refuses to use a self-declared trans-gendered person's chosen identity pronoun. Everyone's a victim. And to them, I dedicate this song. I turn on the tube and what do I see A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me" They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves Victim of this, victim of that Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat Get over it Get over it All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit Get over it, get over it You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash But you might feel better if they gave you some cash The more I think about it, Old Billy was right Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight You don't want to work; you want to live like a king But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing Get over it Get over it If you don't want to play, then you might as well split Get over it, get over it It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak You're makin' the most of your losin' streak Some call it sick, but I call it weak You drag it around like a ball and chain You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down Complain about the present and blame it on the past I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass Get over it Get over it All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit Get over it, get over it The Eagles

It might, perhaps, have escaped your notice, but the conservatives are not in power right now. It's a bit odd you complaining they aren't taking action when they're not in power. Do you propose armed insurrection? Liberals do? Well the Liberals have been in power now for some time. Can you provide a brief list of the things they have done? I know it will be brief, because like the Trump administration, they can't seem to get anything done at all. Not anything of real importance, anyway. Oh, please do let me know what they're doing about health care, aborigines and the legal system because as far as I know they're completely confused about them all.

Of course straight white men are victims - didn't you see the protests in August ? They even killed somebody but still nobody listens.

Quite expensive and due to the approximate 2 year difference in oppositions, it would need to be fairly self-sufficient. Good launch windows to Mars are comparatively rare. So any emergencies would have to solved there...not here. It would be actually cheaper to build a colony first on Phobos due to the low gravity. Once established there, move to the surface at our leisure.

A space elevator on Mars would certainly be a good point, try it there before we can try it here. I agree the elevator may actually be more than a century off. Then again, some people said the same thing about space travel or a lunar landing, that it was decades away from 1961, and yet we did it within eight years. Not saying it's going to be that fast, but once atomic power (or weapons) were considered impossible. It would be the ultimate engineering achievement of course. How many of those land-able rocket boosters have landed successfully? What's the batting average so far? I'm pretty impressed with the knowledge of space travel floating around here. I'm glad I put this thread out. Much better than arguing about the bible or US foreign policy at this point lol.

An article in toda's Globe quotes a number of feminist icons tired of the 'rape culture' argument, especially on campuses, and tell women to start taking a little responsibility for their own behaviour. Getting passed out drunk is stupid, and leave you entirely vulnerable to whomever comes across you, they say. They also seem to feel all these 'feminists' going to college administrators and demanding they do more is like little girls going to daddy for protection. And they need to grow up and take care of themselves. Certainly the law is paternalistic in that 'mutually drunken sex' can generally get the male charged with rape, but never the female. Being completely drunk is explicitly declared to be not a defense for rape in the criminal code, and a women who is too drunk to give consent is therefore being raped even if she gives consent. That the male might be just as drunk is irrelevent to the law. It's still his fault, even if he didn't initiate it. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/when-will-feminism-stop-enabling-stupidity-feminist-generation-gap/article34481903/

All people must do certain things because some people out there are criminally minded. Do you lock your door at night? Do you feel oppressed by having to do so? If you leave on vacation and you leave your house unlocked and your garage door open would you be outraged when you came back, found you had been robbed, and people questioned why you didn't lock up? Do you tape your pin number to your debit card to make life easier for you? Do you keep large amounts of cash in your purse? Do you leave the keys in your car? Let's get real here.

Margaret Wente's column this morning happens, by coincidence, or not, to be about this very subject. Alcohol plays a huge role in sex assaults. Unfounded, The Globe and Mail’s deeply reported series, found that alcohol is a factor in close to half of the incidents that are reported to police. The same is true of sexual assaults on campus. In one survey involving U.S. first-year undergrads, 83 per cent of rapes occurred while the woman was incapacitated. So if alcohol is such a major factor, why don’t we warn young women about the risks of heavy drinking? Simple. No one wants to blame the victim. Reformers have rightly spent years educating the public and the courts that victims are not responsible for sexual assault – their assailants are. But this taboo has resulted in a mass evasion of certain unpleasant, but essential truths. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alcohol-and-assault-what-all-young-women-need-to-know/article34520890/

Agreed, and this was demonstrated recently by a football player sex scandal in my state involving an intoxicated women who claimed "sexual assault" after the fact. Turns out that young people today love to use their smart phones to record drunken debauchery to share later, and what could have been damning evidence against the players turned out to be proof of the alleged victim's consent to many, many sexual acts. In the morning, she felt far more virtuous, and claimed rape. Sorry dear, the law doesn't work that way.

I wouldn't go out and get totally drunk without someone trustworthy nearby who would remain sober. And if I wore my best suit and went out somewhere and got totally drunk alone it would certainly not surprise me if I wound up in an alley with no wallet. Which is why I wouldn't do it.

Yeah, A-Holes of all genders unfortunately.

To be fair, some women also do that.