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.

Actually, the reverse is true. Hydro lines and microwave towers cause an unnatural excitation of brain cells resulting in ceaseless mental activity and super brain characteristics. Of course it ends in tumors but while it lasts its exhilerating On this basis alone, Albertans should leave all important decision making to Easterners, accepting that the brain cell killing effects of sour gas wells and flame offs has been grossly underestimated.

Its an interesting question. There is a fairly large body of socio-political analysis that attempts to understand the North-South alignment of political beliefs and values in North America. Simply put, it notes that attitudes as expressed in politics tend to be more aligned North-South than East-West (which is, of course, the direction of the Canada-U.S. Border). Hence the views of people in Alberta tend to have more in common with U.S. citizens in Idaho or Texas than they do with Canadian citizens in Ontario, Quebec or the maritimes. Similarly, citizens of New York or Boston tend to have more in common with residents of Toronto or Montreal than with residents of Dallas or Little Rock and citizens of Seattle have more in common with those in Vancouver than those in Atlanta. My personal belief is that there is something about living in proximity to oil that makes people stupid, which would account for the people in a band running from Alberta to Texas still wrestling with issues the rest of us settled in the 19th century

We're apparently already in danger of suffering "a tyranny of the minority," rbacon. I think this was covered on several other threads but we have - as do most Western countries - a consitutional democracy. You can view a constitution as the expression of shared core beliefs about the fundamental rights of citizens in our country. Let's take the U.S. constitution as an example. The U.S. consitution holds that "all men are created equal." Many of the men both framing and signing this doucument were slave owners and none of them thought women were created equal. nevertheless, this document served as an expression of core beliefs and also of hope for the future and dreams for a better world. At many - in fact most - points in U.S. history the practices of the government and the view of the majority was definitely NOT that all men were created equal but the constitution stood as a beacon. Do you actually want to live in a country with no overall framework of law to protect its citizens? Where any bigoted, homocidal or genocidal group who can manage to arrange a vote of 51% gets to make law? The entire point of a constitutional democracy is it posits that some rights of citizens are inviolate. It doesn't matter if those citizens are a minority, it doesn't matter if we all approve of them, it doesn't even matter if the rest of us agree with those citizens as long as they are not practising something harmful to the rest of us. What you are talking about is using the power of parliament to strike out a right. To in effect say, we are not all equal under the law, which would be a very sad legacy for any government.

Leafless, I don't think there's a lot of point in addressing your .... what? ... they're not arguments, they're not observations...call them suppositions. However, a couple too bizarre to let pass: " For instance why are ethnics so eager to be involved in our politcal system" Perhaps because they believe in it? You thinks that might be possible? "Can you tell me for instance why the prosecution concerning the Air India fiasco was not successful in laying charges despite the tremendous amount of money spent on that event?" The entire Air India prosecution was bungled, mishandled and at times illegal. If you want to be angry at something be angry that prosecutors and others paid by taxpayers money seemed totally incapable of putting together a successful prosecution and CSIS chose to destroy evidence. You should also be grateful that Canada still has judges who will not allow the crown to be rewarded for activities that were, at best, questionable. The tragedy on tragedy is that those paid to do so were incapable of investigating and prosecting this matter; as a result, the guilty went unapprehended. I don't see much point in going on. Clearly you regard any activity by anyone who doesn't fit your criteria of...what? a "real canadian?" as suspicious. You can dress it up anyway you want but its simply racial bigotry. Its as simple as that. Your opinions aren't based on anything but a deep seated belief that your position as a caucasian male is somehow under attack. It is this strain among Conservative supporters and some Conservative MP's and party people that makes most reasonable people suspicious. I guess time will tell whether the Conservative party represents these types of views.

That really is not correct. The institution of marriage long pre-dates Christianity. The fact that in some Western countries religious institutions were able to assume some state roles during the ascendancy of the Holy Roman Empire is not an argument for tradition, even if one wanted to take the rather dubious position that Canada honours only a Christian tradition. If I understand you correctly, your argument seems to boil down to an objection at using the word "marriage." As the word itself is of Latin origins - "maritatus" - , you seem to be considerably exercised about preserving the purity of a word whose origins also pre-date Christianity.

um .. since you are "lucky" enough to attend an institution where freedom of opinion is suppressed and students are denied what has been traditionally been seen as one of the principal benefits of education - exposure to a broad range of ideas - what do you base the sweeping statemets in your first paragraph on? Heresay? Divine revelation? It doesn't seem to you there is something a little sad and suspicious about an institution whose governors and political masters deny students the right to the individual expression of opinion, something that was traditionally supposed to be a paramount concern in conservative thought? And please don't bother to say faculty are free to express whatever opinions they choose. If you hire only those who support a particular political view, you have passed on the right to claim impartiality.

Is no one going to answer this question? I think you have your answer. Since the position is - at the least - prejudice (if not hate) disguised as morality, no answer is possible, just as no answer was possible when inter-racial marriage was illegal in various U.S. states.

You're playing with words. Nothing needs to be decided. Gays can marry under the Charter, religions are not obligated to perform the ceremony and may not be forced to. Civil marriages are the legal marriage in Canada so gays can marry, religions may or may not decide to perform ceremonies, everybody's happy, nobody's rights are violated. If gays want to be married in the Catholic church they can take that up with the proper authorities in Vatican City.

It might be worth looking at but I doubt it will happen. I know there are a lot of variations of it - I guess a proportional component - used in other countries but I can't honestly say I know much about them. I know Itayl is a very nearly straight PR system which is why they never have a majority and exist on multi-party coalitions. I have heard Italians say it is not as chaotic as people outside Italy like to claim as the reality is it is typically the same few parties forming the coalition.

I didn't set those rules. I don't care if gays have the right to marry. I might care if it became compulsory for all of us to marry gays. I don't think a whole lot of us care about this supposed rule we set up. Surveys tell us about 80% of young people think gays should be allowed to marry so what right do we have to enshrine in law something they, whose country this will soon become, believe in? I can't think of a weaker argument than "society set rules" Society has set rules allowing slavery, defining women as property and a lot of other things. Maybe the Conservatives could start a campaign to ammend the Charter to go back to the good old days when women were property and couldn't vote. Actually, I suspect some of them would do it just to get back at Belinda