mar

As to the first, for centuries, perhaps millenia it has been known that when you repress a people with brutal regimes, you create a reaction in type, in fact driving that population towards the more extreme elements among them. Hence, yes, the imperialist power and its puppet governments bear some of the responsibility for radicalizing the resistance. As to the second, you don't find your defence of U.S. policy somewhat tainted by first the support of Hussein, then the removal of his regime? First the support of Noriega, then his capture? By the support of Bin Laden against the Soviet Union? By the CIA organized murder of Allende leading to the installation of Pinochet? By the death of in excess of 3,000,000 people in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era? They should be blamed for those actions and many more and if that all seems like business as usual to you, then there isn't much point.

So you're equating being non-caucasian and a woman with campaign irrelgularities? Just another stigma that would prevent her from getting votes? Whether or not she seeks it she hasn't got a hope in hell of getting it but there are some voters out there who wouldn't consider your first two criteria automatically disqualify anyone. What would the next election slogan be? Vote for Harper. He's not a ______ _______ (supply your own racial and gender based slurs, two words maximum).

ooooooh Clopin! Left AND feminist. Welcome. OOPS. sorry I see you just don't say much but I dunno how to delete this

Amazing. And Klein's still just as mentally sharp as Ariel Sharon is today!

Damn! You're right. We need a Defence of Marriage Act before these degenerates ruin the country.

Gee, geoffrey, do I have to diagram the jokes for you too? One could certainly argue that the campaign to deny gays-lesbians the right to marry is social engineering if one was so inclined (as justcrowing humourously suggested). Equally, one can argue that a law enforcement program that stipulates higher penalties for users of drugs most easily available to a certain strata of sociery is social engineering when the result is the destruction of their family structure due to a 1 in 4 incarceration rate. Yeah, yaeh, I know its just a happy coincidence, unanticipated by anyone; kind of like the SUV loophole that just nobody noticed and apparently can't fix. The general point of the post was that political parties of all stripes will happily adopt policies they feel are to their benefit, regardless of supposed ideological conflicts.

No, I meant the World Wildlife Fund. I have noticed a distinct lack of spontenaity amd honesty in their presentations. I mean, c'mon, Adopt a Tiger??? Who's got the room? And try claiming the Harper child care benefit even if Tigger is under 6 and eating you out of house and home!

LOL Better watch out, justcrowing. If there's one thing Conservatives say they hate more than taxes its social engineering by government. Oh, wait. That was traditional conservatives, the neoCons are all in favour of social engineeering. Or am I thinking of the Stalinists, or the fascists? Its getting so confusing these days.

Agreed. You can fool some of the people. etc. It had all the spontaneity and truth of the WWF.

So your "answer" is to cut & paste long passages from sources that conform to your opinions? Impressive.

That's because you did yours in "the most conservative university in Canada", geoffrey where students are denied the right to the exposure to a broad range of economic theory essential to truly understanding their subject. Rather than bother with your knowledge-impaired theoretical obervations, I would point out that over about 60 years China went from one of the world's poorest countries with a less than 10% literacy rate, extremely high mortality rates, etc., to a world economic power. For the bulk of that period, development was in the hands of a highly centralised state government. Even you could not argue that the wealth of China has just been "generated" in the past decade or so with the move to a more market style economy. It was built on the previous foundation. You have, however, provided me a with a clue to the rather simplisitic pseudo economic theory that characterizes current Conservative thought. You apparently quite simply have huge gaps in your education. Wealth existed long before capitalism. If you don't understand that, how can you understand anything? Private investment is not the only way to exploit resources as in your oil sands example, it is simply the dominant mechanism under the current economic organization. Apparently the world is not only 6,000 years old, economic organization did not exist until the mid eighteen hundreds (I chose that date deliberately as apparently even Adam Smith is too radical for your tastes).

The corporate sector does not generate wealth; it exploits resources and may control the distribution of wealth. C'mon, guys! This is economics 101. The wealth of petro resources in Alberta were not created by the corporate sector. If we had the furthest left government you can imagine, those resources would still be there and would still be being exploited. The difference would be the mechanism for sharing the wealth generated from these resources among the population. As to our being a "trading nation": a) there is a huge amount of analysis of Canada's economic origins as a mercantile economy dues to its colonial history. this is 2006. Every country is engaged in international trade ("nations" tend not to be). P.S. rbacon, maybe you should start your own blog if you want to post this stuff as it just adds useless clutter in a thread.

I have a suspicion you'd be the first to complain if individual's were claiming OAS, CPP, tax and other benefits because the Church of the Divine Tony the Tiger had married them in accordance with its religious rights. Historically, marriage was first defined by the state and only later was the ceremonial aspect of it "licensed" to religions. Perhaps the solution is to go the Netherlands route where the religious cenemony has no legal standing. All marriages must be performed by the state and it is up to citizens if they choose to celebrate this with some additional religious or other ceremony.

You DO understand that even in a traditional conservative viewpoint, the corporate sector is one institution within society not the sole reason for its existence? A number of economists see recent U.S. developments as an ultimately destructive path; that is, that giving primacy to corporate interests and particularly the multi-national expression of them is gradually impoverishing the domestic population and creating a security burden so immense that the economy will eventually collapse under it. Simply put, there are signs the U.S. economy has become so dependent on activity outside its borders that it can only avoid collapse by an ever increasing imperial policy which will eventually place a burden on the economy that it can't sustain. While this is not directly analogous to Canada, it is the logical expression of a purely corporate view of society.

Several problems with this. First, if you're honest you have to admit that what you are saying is your IMPRESSION is that "even if they dissapprove of this sort of thing they don't disapprove of it all THAT much." That's not fact. The easy answer is to throw back a lot of the content of this thread - some of which is frankly racist - and then say your condemnation of it doesn't strike me as sincere. A more considered response is to point out that there is a huge difference between comprehending the root causes of and action and approving of it. I understand that 9-11 was an inevitable result of U.S. policies in the Middle East; of the support of brutal, non-democratic regimes, the U.S. ignoring its supposed commitment to human rights in order to ensure a stable oil supply, even if that meant supporting Hussein, the House of Saud and other dictatorial regimes. Colonial citizens - whether those colonies are officially designated or held by econonic domination, bribery and political intrigue - tend to strike back against the imperial power. There is nothing new or unanticipated about that except that the world is a smaller place now and imperial powers no longer have the ability to confine the inevitable retaliation to far off lands. That does not mean I approve of the act, it simply means that I understand the conditions that led up to it and continue to exist.