BHS

Since this statement is so important to you that you've made the effort to bold it, I'll write a seperate post for it specifically. Name one (1) democracy that didn't come into being as a result of war.

Did you miss the whole Iraqi election thing back in December? Have you been following the news at all, or did you just come out of a three year coma? I wasn't aware that democracy included unusual vegetation or any of the other things you mentioned. I have so much to learn from you.

Are you a scientist? Did'nt think so. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/...ce/Skeptics.asp Sit down, shut up. The debate on whether its happening is over - only sycophants and paid corporate shrills persist. On this issue I'm as much of a scientist as David Suzuki is. I've already read and commented on Mr. Suzuki's Skeptics page on another thread. Do a search of the forum for your response. And cut it with the ad hom. I'm neither a sycophant nor a shill, just someone more concerned with scientific truth than you are.

Yes, because the average parent is *far" more capable of delivering a balanced education than the state. Let's face facts - homeschoolers are homeschooled usually because of the parents religious attitudes. These parents wish to have the right to indoctrinate their children in various, often anti-societal belief systems. Furthermore, most parents are so uninvolved with their childrens lives that they tend to have the television set as their constant companion. I don't think there is anything wrong with teaching, say 'killing is wrong' in public schools - do you? It would help if you could give an idea exactly what kind of information you object to. Sorry, but no. Public education remains the best system, regardless of what the morality police tell you. You seem to have missed the point of this thread. We aren't discussing the merits of homeschooling or the reasons why a person should choose to homeschool their children. The point is that in Belgium the state has abbrogated the right to interrogate homeschooled children and to throw their parents in jail if they've been taught something that doesn't jibe with what the state feels is appropriate. The test for appropriateness is apparently the gut instinct of the interrogator. That you've tried to turn this thread into a discussion of "morality police" when the intitial topic is the actual police is interesting. "Preaching" hate speech is a public act - it's a good deal different than saying something privately at home. I don't condone teaching hatred to children, but the test for whether a particular notion is "hateful" or not should be something more that a bureaucrat's impression of what children have been taught. Inciting violence is illegal almost everywhere, but unless you're making your kids joust in your livingroom I don't see how it applies. Your last sentence is really intriguing. Forget the concept of judge-made law - you've gone one further and suggested that public policies should be written to accomodate whatever legal arguments savvy lawyers can come up with to convince a jury (because I doubt a judge will be convinced without something more substantial than a lawyer's argument re: the psychology of hate crimes). Bravo.

"Fighting tooth and nail" is an expression. No teeth or nails were involved; indeed, the fight has been political rather than physical. Kinda how people dressing up like clowns and carrying idiotic placards in the street are "fighting" for whatever the cause of the day is. Yeah. When did the Yanks drop a nuke on an Iraqi city? Not to be overly rational, but by what standard has the Iraq intervention been a failure? By using what comparison can you make that statement? What war happened that went smoother? The war isn't over yet. I don't expect you to commend Bush, but accusing him of failing his mission before it's complete demonstrates nothing more than unrealistic expectations on your part. I don't think you're going to get a lot of support for this statement, even with the ranks of like-minded thinkers. Anway, can you provide examples of his corporate agenda? Can you explain how his agenda has been more corporate than, say, Jimmy Carter's? I'm confused. Nothing in the rest of your post explains why you would find this unfortunate, or even how a "kick me" sign relates to Bush's attempts to bring democracy to the ME.

Well, there's a bolt of lightning. This is pretty much a rejoinder to the rest of your own post. The entire point of this thread is that there are 50000 or so folks living in Lebanon who feel it's our duty to come and rescue them, based on the "benefit" of their "Canadian" citizenship.

That's a pretty convenient formulation - Bush has spent 5+ years fighting tooth and nail, against a non-stop barrage of criticism and at the risk of his political career, for a fledgling democracy in the Middle East. And if that democracy survives and flourishes, it will be "in spite of" his efforts. I'm sure this will be the meme I'll be reading from the anti-Bush brigades for the rest of my life.

It's as simple as this: a Canadian is a person with a Canadian citizenship, period. Race and ethnic background don't enter into it. Dual citizenship doesn't count for anything in my book. You're either Canadian, and only Canadian, or you're something else and I don't feel any commitment to you. Expecting me to feel like I owe you something is beyond reasonable. Come to Canada and join our society with full conviction, or stay the hell where you came from. The choice is yours. People who take out a Canadian citizenship as an insurance policy, for when old age or local chaos make life in their preferred country unbearable, have no right to demand that I fix their problems for them. And I refuse, point blank, to feel like I owe them something, or to put up with the notion that I'm a "fascist" or whatever other spurious slur gerry and his ilk can come up with.

So the proposed new rule is, you actually have to have a history of trying (presumably unsuccessfully) to commit violence against an airliner (read "plow it into a skyscraper") before they'll ban you from flying in Canada. Merely having a history of trying to kill civilians by whatever means are available isn't reason enough to prevent you from boarding what amounts to an enormous Molatov cocktail. Link Needless to say, eleven-year-old boys who jokingly say the word "bomb" while waiting to board a flight to Orlando will still get their entire families ejected from the premises with maximum prejudice. In case you haven't got time to read the article but you've read this far and you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, here it is: You'll be happy to know that there will be a full appeals process, but no, the proposed regulations do not allow for financial compensation to terrorists who have no history of using planes for their killing sprees but were wrongly added to the new no-fly list anyway. Here's a typical American response to the proposed regulations (warning: not worksafe).

It reminded me of an incident on the TV news some years ago, when Michael Eisner (Former head of Disney) was introducing their new NHL franchise, (based on a children's movie) the 'Mighty Ducks'. When he dropped the new name, complete with a cheesy plastic duck call, everybody in the media room just laughed. Eiser quickly added "This will work!" a couple of times, but people were still sniggering.I would say that Putin rightly sees the Americans as being fixated on the 'glam of marketing', and not the cold hard realities of manufacturing. Firstly: I was waiting for the other shoe to drop with your Eisner anecdote, but it never came. Does anyone take issue with the silly name anymore? I realize that it was an unbelievable joke in the first season they played, but I haven't heard anyone making fun of it lately. Has Eisner been vindicated by history? If so, what is the point you're trying to make? Secondly: the American economy is still the world's greatest manufacturing powerhouse, even as they outsource as much manufacturing as they can get away with. If Put "rightly sees" that Americans are more into marketing than they are manufacturing it's because he's still got some of that old Soviet pixie dust in his eyes.

I can't follow anthing you've written here. Quit typing in code.

No worries, then. $300-a-barrel oil is on it's way. What may make a difference (I hope) is new technology like the Scuderi engine.

Indeed, I agree with you. Sadly, it is a crazy man who is to make that call. Not completely mad, nind you, because he is trying to use the sabre rattling as a negotiation tool to his advantage. North Korea, I am sure, would have tested a nuke if they had one. It would have been a strong bargaining chip, and Kim Jong-il has certainly used every one he's got so far. Black Dog is correct, the US will only act, whether it be unilaterally or otherwise, only if it is profitable to themselves to do so. And what's Europe's excuse for inaction, in those cases that America has failed to step up and fix the problem? Besides which, I thought the idea was to disuade the US from invading other countries, not goad them into additional invasions.

What a remarkably facile and ironic comment, coming from someone who supports the position that the scientific debate on anthropogenic warming is over. If we're too dependant on oil, what is the upper threshold of "not too dependant"? When will we be in a position to say that our oil dependancy is under control? What would satisfy you in this regard?

Just the sort of response I've come to expect from you. You don't have a serious, intelligent position on this issue, so you slough off serious questions with unwarranted ad hominem. You're a shame on this forum. UPDATE: And by the way, "Never mind" is two words.

Liam describes America as multicultural, which is true in that the cultural traditions of many foreign cultures have become American mainstays as new immigrant populations have been absorbed. But America's official policy vis-a-vis immigration has always been assimilationist. "The Great American Melting Pot" description comes to mind immediately. I work with a guy who just became a Canadian citizen, so I'll ask him what was required, but I believe the American requirements are a good deal more stringent, and new immigrants are encouraged by a variety of means to learn English and adopt American customs. If a foreign identity supercedes one's American identity in a person's mind, how that person honestly claim to be an American patriot?

30 working days is 6 business weeks, or a month and a half's salary, or $6000 dollars, or $75 billion annually, or 3/4 of health care. How, though, is most of this cost avoidable? Forcing everyone to live a block and a half from their workplace? Building factories and office blocks in the middle of subdivisions?

Sorry gerry, in all the excitement I've missed your intelligent approach. What was that again?

Except for the the experiment part, this is a pretty good description of how Canada got it's start. The big difference here is that there are six (?) times as many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza as there are natives living in Canada altogether, and Israel is about the size of Southern Ontario. If we had similar conditions the current issues we're facing in Caledonia would be much more severe and long-lasting. Temper, temper.

A good reason to keep at least one alternative around that is not subject to the pressures of stock market valuation. Is this some sort of sly defence of the CBC? Fess up.

A veritable WB.

Depends on who you ask. Viva la raca!

So what this thread boils down to is not so much as a genuine attempt to debate a given topic, so much as an excuse for you to exercise your freedom to ridicule Americans. Which is fine. So long as you don't confuse making decisions from a viewpoint informed by religious indoctrination as being the imposition of that religion itself. There is another possibility: countries with the highest levels of education and literacy also have the highest standards of living, and the reverse is also true. People who face desperate circumstances often turn to supernatural beliefs to cope with their earthly struggles. It's entirely possible that religious is less important to the people of the first world not because they are better educated, but because they are too fat and satisfied to feel the need for it.

Indeed, there are billions of people world wide who ascribe to outdated, archaic, illogical supernatural belief systems. A good percentage of them are poor illiterates living in socially repressive and scientifically primative societies. Across the globe there's an inverse correlation between education, economic prosperity, social liberty and scientific advancement and the degree of religious belief, the United States being one of the few notable exceptions. So I'm willing to cut people who can't read a bit of slack when it comes to harbouring foolish notions of the origins of life. Americans? Not so much. And besides, why worship God when you can worship the state? The allegorical vengence of an etheral super-being doesn't have the same authenticity as the collective bootheel on your windpipe. I like, too, how you equate belief with intelligence, as if one was a proof of the other.

A quick question regarding the US Administration's sea-change in it's policy of treating all enemy combatants, legal and otherwise, as prisoners-of-war under the Geneva Conventions: If these prisoners are forced to spend time around US military personel, but aren't allowed to saw some of their heads off, does that count as an affront to their diginity under Article 3?