SpankyMcFarland

Hadfield would be a great choice. The process should be at arm's length from the PM, though. It's a bit unseemly for the head of government to be appointing the acting head of state who is supposed to a nonpartisan safeguard against the abuse of power.

In terms of damage control, the Libs should continue their low key 'it's regrettable but our hands are tied, what are you going to do' approach. Maybe some of the older Libs (hi Ralph) should gently throw themselves and Martin under the bus as well for their handling of the affair way back when.

By its nature, this Inquiry will be controversial and imperfect. Any Inquiry will be mishandled in the eyes of many here.

I don't disagree there. All I'm saying is that centrist voters will not be obsessed about it for years. Ultimately, JT did not cause this problem. Previous Lib and Tory admins did.

It would take some brass neck on the Tory's part to criticize an Inquiry they would never have held.

How much is that each? 30 cents? Not compared to billions of dollars in the economy.

The whole thing was overdone from the start. He should never have been sent to Gitmo, never charged and Harper should have brought him back ASAP. That would have saved us all a fair chunk of change.

The Khadr is a big deal to people who vote Tory anyway who are over-represented on sites like this. People may be mildly offended in the middle right now but they'll be looking at wallet issues come Election Day.

What is an act of terrorism? It's often in the eye of the beholder. If Khadr was firing at civilians in Ottawa it would be easy to classify that as terrorism but once you are living in a country that has been invaded things are more complicated. I presume the Taliban, like any government in such circumstances, welcomed any help it could get at the time. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan but I fully expected armed resistance from the inhabitants. I presume the Speer family lawyers will try to avoid having to defend Khadr's dubious confession in a Canadian court as it will be given rough treatment for multiple obvious reasons and may not be admissible as evidence. People present the dreadful record of the Khadr family as an aggravating factor against him. That is Taliban thinking that has no place in this country. He was BROUGHT to Afghanistan by his family. To listen to Harper (and HIS family now) you'd think this guy was Osama B. Laden.

The blockade is about one nation controlling another. The terrorism accusation is silly coming from KSA.

We're back where we started at the dawn of the Cold War.

Trump's tweets sound like he wants some other country to sort this out: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/03/trump-tweets-angry-response-to-north-korean-missile-launch.html Not very reassuring for SK or Japan.

There would appear to be an increasing risk of serious conflict here but not as much alarm as you'd expect, especially from the Chinese. If I was Japanese, I'd prefer to have my own nukes to rely on.

I'm thinking Berlin Wall and when we stopped fearing the Reds so much. As in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, the Left seemed tough enough in Muslim countries to resist tyranny (often at the cost of bringing in tyranny itself, unfortunately). We have a lot more in common with communists than Islamic extremists.

I think post 1989, 9/11 and the Afghan Wars, we can see communists and socialists in Muslim countries a little differently. Many of the best and brightest joined these parties in an effort to modernize their societies and free them from the grip of religion. Socialists are modernists - different pew but same church as ourselves.

HB has worked tirelessly to destroy Lebanon and Syria and you're getting upset because they defended Muslims from genocide in Bosnia.

Not everybody everywhere, though. For example, the average household income in my town is 80k.

They vote for their interests like everybody else. Just reminding you that there's a boatload of people out here paying lots of federal tax.

The ENTIRE population of Atlantic Canada, mind you. A little over the top there.

According to this survey, Iran is the least anti-Semitic country surveyed in the ME/NA region (which would not be too hard) and less anti-Semitic than Greece: http://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary.pdf

What AJ Arabic has brought to the ME is real debate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/23/why-saudi-arabia-hates-al-jazeera-so-much/?utm_term=.082f0b8deda7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/06/23/why-arab-states-are-wrong-to-try-to-shut-down-al-jazeera/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.f3c570ca4707 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/al-jazeera-qatar-saudi-arabia-muslim-brotherhood/531471/ Al Jazeera needs to be compared with local competitors like Al Arabiya. By that yardstick it has made a highly positive contribution.

The NDP-Greens should appoint a Speaker and, if forced to, this person should vote along partisan lines. And we'll see what Andrew Coyne can do about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/23/the-guardian-view-on-al-jazeera-muzzling-journalism

Maybe it's just an honesty test? Something tells me the Canadians are lying as usual. Mucho sceptical about that Chinese result too. We are all born tribal. We can control it and/or hide it but this impulse does not go away.

Where might one need a stiff drink more? No problem with that at all.