Mad_Michael

You you all work hard enough, I'm sure you can create the war you all desperately seem to want.

You require 'proof' that Sunni vs Shi'ite is a long standing division in the Middle East? You require 'proof' that traditionalist vs modernist is a long standing division in Middle East? You require 'proof' that nationalism vs Islam is a long standing division in Middle East? You play games. No, all countries mentioned by you were of the same religious descent (Muslim). But they would definitely amount to major stability issues, if confirmed. Care to post a reference to those invasions of Saudi Arabia and Syria? Link? Sorry, I draw my reference materials from published books. You go play with google if you like. Egypt under Mohammad Ali invaded Saudi Arabia in 1811 and Yemen in 1818. Egypt invaded Sudan in 1821, and Syria in 1832. May I point out to you that Mohammad Ali was the first Egyptian to hold the throne of Egypt since the time of the Pharoahs? And he immediately started to make war on his neighbours. And he was totally hated and not supported by any foreign power. As for the Iran-Iraq war, you cannot (with any credibility anyway) call a war foreign dominated or foreign controlled just because both participants seek out foreign suppliers. Iran and Iraq fought their war on their own terms. And immediately ignored. According to you, if Iraq buys even a single bullet from a foreign supplier, that foreign nation becomes responsible for the Iran-Iraq war? Your bias is showing. And your argument makes Iran responsible for the violence in Iraq right now since it is quite likely they are supplying the Shi'ites in Iraq. No doubt and well you should. But it doesn't give you the right to proclaim the West guilty of causing every problem in the Middle East and exhonerating the Arabs & Muslims of any responsibility for their own affairs - which is what it appears you are doing here. You assert that the Iran-Iraq was was nothing more than a Western proxy war? Your credibility is falling from 'low' to 'none' with that remark. I have at no time denied Western involvement in the Middle East. I have at no time excused their behaviour. But you have denied Arab/Muslim involvement in the Middle East. You have excused their behavour and painted them as poor innocent victims of Western warmongering. According to you, everything that happens in the Middle East is a product of Western powers and influence. That is categorically simplistic and evidence of extreme bias. And completely ignored every fact of the prior century of continuous Arab/Muslim misrule, violence and corruption, internal division and sectarian conflict. And do you mean to say that the entire population of the Middle East is innocent of their situation? See? I can play rhetorical games too! No. The label I'm putting on the opponent has every reason for it. Beating my head against a brick wall is a waste of my time and serves no purpose. The reason that the western powers are involved in the region is entirely due to the mismanagement, misrule, corruption and sectarian, racial and linguistic divisions within the region, and a product of their own governance for centuries caused a power vaccum that required and necessatated western security interests in the region when their own governmental system collapsed. If the region showed even an ounce of ability in maintaining their own affairs without appealing for western 'assistance' against their enemies, the region of the Middle East would have been substantially free of western powers. You are taking the result of long standing Arab/Muslim governmental problems in the Middle East and postulating it as the cause of those same problems. That is illogical. Anyway, I'm done here. You may reply and have the last word. I don't see any basis for a productive discussion. I thought the topic here might be to address the present problems in the Middle East and how they might be addressed by Blair. I was wrong. You just want to bash the west and pretend they are to blame for everything. That is so categorically one-sided that no profitable discussion can take place here. One cannot reason with a fanatic. Good day.

A Federal Conservative party has swept Quebec's seats twice. Diefenbaker and Mulroney. Harper's handful of Quebec seats is not impressive at all and does nothing re-shape the political landscape. The political landscape of Canada is the same as it was ten or twenty years ago. Harper has changed nothing.

John Turner didn't speak French? (I have no idea if Turner was Protestant or Catholic). And we'd have to go back to Pearson to find a PM not from Quebec or Alberta (Campbell doesn't count). And Diefenbaker's sweep of some 50 seats in Quebec doesn't count either eh?

1. Canada is an officially bilingual country. 2. You haven't noticed the hundreds if not thousands of words in English that have French origins? A parliament is sovereign. Provincial legislatures are not soveriegn. He would like to be.

Methinks you are taking an overly simplistic view of such matters. The Russians don't have to 'win' an arms race for such a policy to have some benefit to them. And Putin is way smarter cookie than Bush is. Don't 'misunderestimate' Putin. He doesn't seem to make many stupid mistakes.

You seem to 'take' things incorrectly quite often. No need to stop doing so now.

As I noted above, that is because "separation of Church and State" has no legal or constitutional standing in the UK. You can't cite something that doesn't have legal standing.

That's because it is categorically impossible to prove a negative.

These problems are not duplicated in any other place on the globe. For the most part, they describe major and deep-seated social/cultural divisions within the Middle East. You mean like the Egyptian invasions of Saudi Arabia and Syria? Or the conquest of Yemen? Or war between Iran & Iraq? Btw, the situation in Lebanon has been pretty much going on as it presently is for about two centuries now. That place is really fractured by a half-dozen racial-religious groups. This was a direct result of Ottoman policy & Ottoman rule. No, technology doesn't require the West to rule the Middle East. But in actuality, the Arab/Islamic desire for western technology, western science and western weaponry enables, facilitates and essentially 'causes' Western influence to dominate. The influence of the West then in turn creates more political instability that only more western weapons and western technolgy and western wealth can help to control. Iraq is a perfect example. It was ruled by a tiny Sunni minority (originally supported by Saudi Arabia because it is a fellow Sunni state) over the Shi'ite majority that had no political power. What you are seeing today in Iraq is what happens when the Sunni strongman was removed (along with the Saudi paymasters). The Shi'ites are re-asserting their numerical superiority and seeking vengence for Sunni rule over them. And the direct US military support for Saudi only began in 1991 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. The Saudi's rule over their own country is rather unstable at best and they felt very threatened by both Saddam's army and their own people overthrowing the House of Saud in an Islamic revolution (Iranian style). Thus, the King of Saud requested US troops be stationed in Saudi to enforce the rule of the House of Saud against the threat of Islamic revolution in Saudi Arabia. US support in Egypt serves the same purpose. The Egyptian dictators use US money and US military support to ensure their own control over their own nation against the massive opposition of their own people. Btw, this Sunni vs Shi'ite split is also at the heart of your beloved and unstable Lebanon. It complicates the Islam vs Christian split in Lebanon. Apparently you believe that it is only the business of the Middle East to blame the West for every problem they have. This absolves the Arabs and Muslim people for their responsibility for their own affairs (which they have handled brutally badly) and it serves the purpose of Arabic/Islamic dictatorships in maintaining their authoritarian rule over their people. And of course, your supposition completely ignores Arab/Islamic elite complicity in Western power in the region. I don't see any reason or purpose in my continuing this discussion. You apparently have a hard-core ideolgogical bias here that needs to identify the West as the sole cause of all problems in the Middle East. I think that is dangerous and one of the major reasons for ever continued instability in the Middle East. A complete inability to come to grips with Arabic and Islamic responsibility for their won mess. Blaming the west is so much easier to do than to admit any mutual Arabic and/or Islamic responsibility. And I have been very careful here not to portray the West as innocent here. They aren't. I am approaching this topic with an open mind and awareness of the actual and immediate history of the region. If only the Arabs, Muslims and their apologists would do the same.

Used Car Dealers are licenced. Private sellers are not. Yes, home-ownership has always been cross-subsidised in Canada. Renters of appartments pay much higher property tax rates than houses in suburbs, yet houses in suburbs cost several times as much in cost of provision of services. And the construction materials used in building of 'rental' apartments is fully taxable (GST). The construction materials used for building condominiums or single dwelling houses is tax-exempt.

I consider the idea of a PQ leader becoming Prime Minister of Canada to be utterly absurd.

It would. There's the rub isn't it? Some religions cannot be taught in line with the laws and traditions of this country. This is likely to be problematic. Any course offerred and then withdrawn (for lack of sufficient registration) will be construed as obvious 'proof' of the State censoring that course's material. Minority religions are not known for their resaonable approach to such issues.

Indeed. I'm inclined to agree. Collective entities can and do exist and can be guilty of facilitating or encouraging the committing of crimes.

Spirit (or soul) cannot be identical to identity if you believe in an afterlife. One's identity belongs to one's mortal existence - it is documented and ends with physical death. The Spirit (or soul) may supposedly/allegedly continue (or some believe that it does). Ergo, they must be two different things (unless there is no afterlife, in which case, this argument is moot).

Are you describing the Ottomans or the Western Powers here? The Ottomans practically invented the art of 'divide and rule'. They were masters at 're-locating' racial minorities around to make sure there was never any dominant racial majority in any given locality that could challenge their rule. The Balkans of Southern Europe and the Middle East are a legacy of this policy of Government by the Ottomans enacted over the last five centuries. 1. The Middle East is host to most of the holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims. This has always been a major source of tension in the region. This issue has always fueled beliefs by one religious group of nefarious motives/actions by the other religious groups. This issue is always hot and has endured for over 1300 years so far. 2. Ever since Sultan Mehmet IV's last unsuccessful siege on Vienna in 1683 (commanded by Mustafa), the Muslim world has been on the losing end of just about every major military confrontation with Europeans. Where once the Ottoman army of elite Janissary warriors was much feared, by the late-17th century, European scientific and technical advantages on the battlefield had made the Janissaries pretty much impotent. This fact drives an extraordinary amount of Arabic and Islamic sense of 'humilitation' at the hands of Christian Europe (Arabs apparently define 'humiliation' as anything other than their own victory and/or domination). 3. The Islamic people may rightfully claim that in the 11th century AD, Islamic culture was more advanced and sophisticated, with more advanced science, mathematics, medicine and astronomy than Christian Europe. By the 18th century, the Islamic world lagged far behind Christian Europe in every one of these categories. Again, this fact fuels an extraordinary amount of Arabic and Islamic sense of 'humiliation' at the hands of Christian Europe. 4. The fact that Arabic/Islamic culture lags so far behind the Christian West in science, technology and industry also fuels a second source of division in the Arabic/Islamic world - as to how to address this fact - should Arabic/Islamic society modernize/liberalize/westernize in order to advance their standard of living or remain reliant on western technology and trade? Or close their doors and shut themselves off and pretend that its is still the 14th century? 5. The longstanding political-tribal factionism of Sunni vs Shi'ite complicates all political issues in the Middle East given that society in the Middle East is still primarily based on tribal clans - and every tribal clan is either Sunni or Shi'ite. 6. The failure of the institution of government in the Middle East. Because there is no substantive concept or principle of 'nation-state' or 'good-government' or 'representative government' (or civil society for that matter) in the Islamic world, their governments have always been corrupt, disfunctional, arbitrary and self-serving. Enormous and systematic corruption is why the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the same level of endemic corruption has defined governments in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey ever since. Indeed, it was corruption and incompetent government that brought down the old Caliphate and allowed the Ottomans to take over so many centuries ago. And it is endemic corruption of government throughout the Middle East to this day that makes any progress on any issue, almost impossible to achieve. 7. The failure of nationalism. Nationalism is the method by which the Western nations forged themselves into coherent political unities known as nation-states. This is a very powerful, efficient and effective form of political organisation. In the Middle East, there is an irreconcilable difference between Turkish, Egyptian or Persian nationalism and Arab Islamicism. This is yet another fissure point in Middle East politics. This is often cited as the failure of pan-Arabism. Islamic culture (for the most part) does not admit of the validity of a secular state government. So there you have a list of some 'endemic' problems of the Middle East. The religious crossroads, the Arab/Islamic sense of inferiority to the West and Christianity, the overwhelming technological, economic, scientific and military power of the Western nations, the conflict between Sunni & Shi'ites as well as the conflict between traditionalists and modernisers, and the conflict between nationalists and Islamicists. All of these issues and conflicts in the Middle East all predate the arrival of Western colonial power and/or Western military conquests of the 19th and 20th century. As I noted above, the arrival of Western powers directly into the Middle East during the last two centuries has served to magnify and/or intesify all of these long-simmering disputes and fault-lines in the region of the Middle East. But these issues all predate the arrival of the Western powers and the creation of the state of Israel. Btw, are familiar with the history of Islam and the Jews? They have always been allies and friends for the last 1300 years right up until the advent of Whabbism out of Saudi Arabia (with its own native form of militant anti-semitism) and Nazi's attempts to develop alliances with Turkey & Iran between WW1 & WW2. At that time, the Arabs acquired a virolent hatred of Jews and that pre-dates the establishment of Israel. So, there you have it in a nutshell - some of the most long standing issues in the Middle East. Added together, the place is a simmering cauldron of political instability - even without the presence of Israel or Western colonial/imperial powers. This in no way, shape or form, may be construed as an attempt to paint the Western Powers as lily white and innocent of the present smoulding mess in the Middle East. As you quite rightly pointed out, they are up to their eyeballs in involvement there. But my only point is that the Western powers did not make the Middle East into the mess it is - only contributed & complicated to the Arabic/Islamic mess that long existed there - and has certainly made the whole mess worse and harder than ever to resolve. Bottom line is that the mess in the Middle East is very much an Islamic issue. They will do everything they can to blame the West for their own problems - and that is what they do all the time - while the Arab/Islamic rulers contintue their mis-rule, with all their corruption and inefficiency and violence towards their own people.

Such as? Indeed. Damn good question.

According to the Jews, the definition of a Jew is one who is born of a Jewish mother.

Yes, the geographic region that is presently known as Israel, Palestine/West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Persian Gulf, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and most of the north coast of Africa was ruled by the Sultan of the Ottoman Turks. By the late 18th century, the Ottoman Empire became increasingly weak and was falling apart. By the early 19th, they were completely bankrupt. With an ambitious Russia (the ancestral enemy of the Ottomans) likely to defeat Ottomans and take over that region, the Brits & French did their best to 'prop-up' the Ottomans (in order to forstall Russian takeover of Turkey). The Ottoman Empire then choose to support Germany in WW1 and upon losing that war completely collapsed to nothing. It is at that time that the Brits and the French received their 'mandates' from the League of Nations, making them 'responsible' for Palestine, Jordan, Iraq & Egypt (Britain) and Syria and Lebanon (France). Zionism was 'established' in the late 19th century. That was when the Jews began to immigrate to Israel. This was during Ottoman control, 30-40 years before British control of this region was established. That being said, Jewish immigration to Israel certainly did pick up during the 1920's under the rule of the British 'mandate'. I believe there was an average of 20,000-30,000 Jewish immigrants per year to Israel/Palestine during the 1920's, then an average of 30,000-40,000 per year during the 1930's. No one has ever denied Britain's 'premier' position in creating the state of Israel. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is the defining 'evidence' of this fact. My point about Western European colonialism was entirely to say that ALL of the key problems that bedevil the middle east to this day, were all present prior to the establishment of European colonial rule in the Middle East. Indeed, prior to WW1, really only Lebanon, Syria and Egypt had substantial western colonial connections. Yes, all of the western nations are 'complicit' in the granting of statehood to Israel. And I do disagree that there's no hope. Politics can and do change over time. The 'two-state' theory for example. That idea was first (substantively) offered back in the late 1940's and was utterly, completely and contemptuously rejected by the Palestinians at that time. The Jews also completely rejected that proposal. Now, things look quite different upon that particular policy proposal. Reality appears to be creeping in on the hardliners no matter how much they don't like it. That being said, the militant Jewish aggression in the creation, fortification and maintenance of settlements on occupied Palestinian territory is guarenteed to be a cause for bloodshed for decades to come - no matter what happens with official peace plans. Ultimately, it is these settlers that are the true stumbling block to any real peace deal 'on the ground' there. I sincerely wish Tony Blair the best of luck in his endeavour. Blair/Britain does offer the opportunity for a 'face-saving' action for Israel that does not pander to the US and that is critically important in the middle east region.

That's colourful! Btw, your first sentence is a categorical 'untruth'. Congress has NOT "told Bush to turn over the documents". No such Congressional order has been issued naming President Bush. After that, your post is all downhill. Though it is to be noted that Jeb's educational software company has indeed made a few million dollars in sales, helped along by his famous name connections, that is hardly worthy of much soiling of panties or the adjective of "BILLIONS" of anything.

UNSC 687 applies to the state/government of Iraq, not Kuwait. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was only the 'occasion' for the issuance of UNSC 687 which specifically applies to Iraq - and to which, Iraq ultimately failed to comply with. There is room for some dispute as to whether UNSC 687 offers 'clear-cut' authorization for the invasion or only 'inferred' authority (based on Iraqi non-compliance). Anyone who suggests that this resolution categorically authorizes or forbids the invasion of Iraq is playing partisan games. Certainly the USA tried in 2002/03 to get the UNSC to issue a clear and categorical order for the invasion of Iraq, but the failure of this 'diplomacy' does not in any way prejudice the standing of UNSC 687 (1991).

The official US position upon the issue is that their military invasion of Iraq fails under the authority granted by UNSC 687 (1991). While this might be 'stretching the resolution' almost to the breaking point, the fact remains that the US invasion of Iraq is thus, technically (and arguably) legal. I may still argue that it was stupid, pig-headed and bad policy (and indeed, a sign of US weakness), but I'd never suggest that it was categorically illegal.

You can't put it more clearly. Or be more wrong. You should meet my Jewish atheist friends. According to you, they don't exist.

Your statement rings hollow. Your argument is entirely predicated upon the fact that YOU hate fags. That's all there is to your argument, post after post, day after day, that's your only consistent argument.

15%+ of a given age group would be sexually attracted to the same sex or would practice same-sex relations? Where do you get these numbers from? Loosely extrapolated from the Kinsey data set based upon YOUR definition of gay. Yes, the results are absurd. That is a function of applying your definition.