Hugo

I wouldn't be so sure. American servicemen are amongst the most highly trained and motivated in the world. If you look at the statistics, you'll find that a large majority of servicemen have a higher education qualification of some kind, and virtually all officers are college or university graduates. American training programmes are top-notch and American servicemen are technically competent, and are taught to be versatile and to take initiative, something which is sorely lacking in other armies (notably those of totalitarian states), and can be seen in the excellence of the American NCO ranks. Not that Canadian troops are poorly trained or stupid, at all. I think that to say that 1 Canadian solider is worth 5 Americans, though, is absolutely ridiculous.

This part of the law means that nothing has to have happened as a result of what you said. All a prosecutor has to do, is to argue that what you said "is likely" to cause a breach of the peace. Under this law, you are not innocent until proven guilty.

Israel fired the first shots in 1967, after: 1) Egypt suddenly and without explanation moved large numbers of troops into Sinai three weeks previously 2) The United Nations peacekeepers between Israel and Egypt were withdrawn a few days later at the insistence of Nasser 3) The Egyptian navy blocked the Straits of Tiran and prevented the passage of any Israeli shipping into or out of the Gulf of Eilat about a week before open hostilities commenced 4) Israel was facing a sudden increase of hostile Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi troops on its borders to the effect that it was outnumbered 3 to 1. Pretend you're Moshe Dayan for a second. The Arabs have launched two wars of aggression against your nation in recent memory and have sworn to destroy you. Now you are witnessing a massive mobilisation of Arab armies on all of your borders. What would you do?

Abortion in the event of pregnancy imperiling the life of the mother has always been legal. What about if the mother's life or health were not in danger, though?

Regarding my hypothetical daughter's future, even if there were no way she could attend university (for instance) I would rather that, than my grandchild to be killed by a particularly barbaric method. Please tell me, do you agree with abortion-on-demand, up to the day before birth (including, therefore, late-term and partial-birth abortion), or do you believe that there should be some cut-off date after which no abortion can be performed?

I think the Liberals really need to get back to the basics on these kinds of issues. A gun registry is really unimportant when regional police and RCMP funding are at 30-year lows. A biometric ID card cannot help when Citizenship & Immigration Canada is such an inept and inefficient organisation, when the borders are open and unguarded in many places, and where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and invalid SIN numbers have almost literally vanished somewhere into Canada.

I would rather my 15-year-old daughter take responsibility for her actions, than to come home and tell me that she had a doctor dissolve my first grandchild in saline solution and throw the remains in a dumpster. Why, because they are already dead? Great solution. By that standard, let's kill every black male child in America. It'll spare them the pain of gangland shootings later on.

You could argue that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, as NAMBLA already does. While C-250 might not protect pedophiles from being prosecuted, it might well be used to protect them from "hate speech." I'm sure you think you've been very clever, unfortunately, I don't recall seeing any large numbers of psychiatrists and doctors being of the opinion that Judaism was a mental illness and a deviancy. Perhaps you can point me to the medical professionals who believe that? C-250 does not deal with religious objection, in fact, it specifically says that it will be tolerated, so therefore your point here is invalid. What will be targetted is secular objection to homosexuality, of the type that comes from medical professionals.

I am highly suspicious of this law because it uses "sexual orientation" in a way that could also be used to "protect" pedophiles or child pornographers, for instance, from hate speech. The hate speech law still also does not extend to the handicapped or the elderly - are they less worthy of protection from hatred? I believe that homosexual groups will use this law to muzzle their opponents. Probably not me, but "ex-gay" organisations and counsellors will almost certainly come under fire. I cannot see what other purpose C-250 has, since the rights of homosexuals are already protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. C-250 is totally redundant, unless its purpose is to muzzle those who speak out against homosexuality, and that worries me. 319.1 invites criminal conviction not just on the basis of breaches of the peace that have occurred, but on the prejudiced speculation of breaches of the peace that may occur in the future. Zundel has done other things to be imprisoned for, notably speaking at Nazi rallies and so forth. Nevertheless, the book he wrote is "hate speech" in Canada.

No, I believe that figure came from a survey of obituaries in gay magazines and newspapers, and it was arrived at after deaths from AIDS were removed. However, it doesn't take into account deaths that were not in those newspapers and it occurs to me that those with obituaries in gay publications were probably the more flamboyant of their orientation and any estimate thus derived is probably erroneous. It's probably difficult to gather actual facts on this since death certificates and coroner's reports generally don't give information on sexual orientation. From the number of times I saw this on the web, however, your guess that nitwits have posted this all over the place is, unfortunately, probably true. Maybe, but the statistics say that homosexuals are far more promiscuous, for whatever reason. They also say that homosexuals suffer far more diseases, for whatever reason. Good point, but you should also note that AIDS is so predominantly suffered by homosexuals it is not funny, and that instances of substance abuse and hard drug abuse, like suicide, are far higher amongst homosexuals. So, is it the case that drug and AIDS deaths are skewing the figures for homosexuals - or is it the other way around? It seems to me that the odds of AIDS, drug abuse, suicide, serious STDs and so forth are stacked greatly against homosexuals. That can't be good, and the fact that these problems occur so much more in the gay community, to my mind, can only mean that either: 1) Homosexuality often causes the above problems. 2) Homosexuality and the above problems are usually caused by another, underlying problem. Myself, I subscribe to the latter idea. I find that, although anal sex does have health risks, it's implausible that anal sex alone would cause the problems that plague the homosexual community. It's my belief that homosexuality, extreme promiscuity, suicidal tendencies and so forth, and the lack of self-respect that accompany these, probably stem from the same root cause of underlying self-esteem issues. This is borne out by the very high percentage of homosexuals who suffered sexual abuse as children or who had issues with male role models and gender identity. I don't think we need to outlaw or punish homosexuals any more than we need to outlaw or punish the mentally ill. However, I would like an end to homosexual propaganda, parades and celebration of the "lifestyle" because, after all, nobody is celebrating smoking or hard drug abuse. I would like to have a truth campaign on the actual risks of homosexuality, and to encourage homosexual men to seek help rather than instant gratification and to make that help more readily available.

Actually, when abortion was illegal far fewer of them occurred than was even previously thought. A former director of NARAL admitted that the figures for so-called back-alley abortions quoted in the Roe vs. Wade case were complete fabrications with no grounding in truth. If we make abortion illegal, it'll still happen, much as murder still happens even though it's illegal. What we can be sure of, though, is that hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved.

That one's probably erroneous. I'm not sure if the CDC even did it (although numerous places seem to think they did, if you Google it), but it looks suspect now that I look at it in detail. So, scratch that one. Now, what about the rest of them?

It is not anybody's place to kill another innocent human. Just because that person is the victim's mother is no excuse, and it didn't work for Andrea Yates.

I would say that any person's life is "owned" by them alone, and not by another person, even if it's a parent. That's why infanticide is illegal, you know.

Hmmm. Are you only left-wing when stoned, or all of the time?

With regard to Whistler's point: I find it very, very strange to argue that death is preferable to poverty, and even stranger to argue that you could or should decide for another person whether or not they would feel that death is preferable to poverty and then to kill them accordingly.

I apologise for the formatting errors, I'm unable to edit them out for some reason.

Scotch, The law that you have cited is vague and fails to define "hatred." Therefore, if a lawyer can argue in a court that my comments on this forum may have caused a breach of the peace, I can be convicted. You may think it's all fine and dandy, but I think a lawyer could twist this around pretty easily. FastNed, you're a lawyer, aren't you? Do you think this law could be used against me for the comments I have made in public? Now, this just illustrates your libellous debating tactics, because this is the precise opposite of what I said. Riff, The fact remains that you still have not cited any evidence to contradict what I say. You have not disputed the CDC's figures, so is it your opinion that being 2,300% more likely to contract an STD or 500,000% more likely to contract AIDS would not/B] shorten your lifespan at all? Anyway, consider the following: --Sally Ann Steward, "AIDS Aftermath: Fewer Sex Partners Among Gay Men," USA Today, November 21, 1984: A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, "Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women," Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978, pp. 308-309; A.P. Bell, M.S. Weinberg, and S.K. Hammersmith, "Sexual Preference," Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1981 --McWhirter and Mattison, "The Male Couple," 1984 (themselves homosexual) --International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, 657-661 --AMA’s Archives of General Psychiatry, October 1999 --Williams and Weinberg - 1974 --The Gay Report, Jay and Young, Summit Books --American Center for Disease Control --American Center for Disease Control Alright, Riff, it's your turn. You have not cited a single source, study or piece of evidence to support your views, only your personal "doubts" and "common sense." Now, put up or shut up.

It's a nightmare trying to find anything on the CDC website. Furthermore, I have already done a load of research on this, and you have cited nothing. I am getting tired of doing all the legwork in this debate, when all you come back with is unfounded "doubt" and what your "common sense" can tell you. I think it's about time that you did some research of your own and actually did something solid to refute my findings, if you can.

So, can I kill a prematurely born baby a week after his birth, while he is still in an incubator?

Well, Riff, those figures on gay disease incidence were from the CDC, and it seems to me that you could not have those diseases without it impacting life-span. AIDS alone is far, far more prevalent amongst the homosexual community (a homosexual is "thousands of times more likely" to contract the disease, according to CDC) and as AIDS is an invariably fatal disease, that must also have a significant impact on the life expectancy. A separate study, I believe from Bell and Weinberg, stated that a 21-year-old homosexual had a 50% chance of being either dead or HIV-positive within 10 years. Now, if you actually have any evidence that contradicts my findings, please post it. But given those disease statistics and the extreme promiscuity of the gay community, combined with their disregard for safe sex protocol, it is pretty easy to believe the case for a 42-year average lifespan.

I don't think that was the problem. The way I see it is that he was having this consensual sex in his office whilst in the pay of taxpayers. He was in his office, on "company time" if you will, shirking his job and grossly misconducting himself. As I said, if he were an executive he would have been fired on the spot. He then lied about it under oath, which is of itself a pretty serious offence. As a lawyer he should know that, but instead he chose to lie to a court and to the American public.

Of course, Plato, you are right. I am just growing tired of the vendetta Nova has against Craig, myself. In answer to your points, I would like to say that the America of Vietnam and the America of today are very different. The US military is now an all-volunteer force and it is virtually impossible that morale would ever be as low as it was in Vietnam. Furthermore, the days of industrial-scale warfare are over as the industrial age itself is. Automation and technology have made possible amazing things. A modern cruise missile can do alone what a flight of bombers crewed by hundreds of men could not do in a week during WWII. Even since Gulf I, technology has progressed to the state where the US military, in Gulf II, could unleash many times the firepower it did in Gulf I, yet still using far fewer troops. Corporations are not particularly deciding US politics. As an example, many Congressmen did not support the Trade Promotion Authority even though they had received large donations from member companies. Of course, corporations can donate money, but they can't vote, and to get re-elected an American politician does have to serve or at least appear to serve his electorate, or they'll vote for someone else. The problem with American democracy that I see is not that corporate interests are over-riding, but that voters do not take a keen enough interest in politics. In a comparison to Rome, one should note that Rome was never anything close to a democracy and the people never had a say in the government. The American people still do have a say in their government and the voice of the ballot box is heard more loudly than the voice of corporate donations.

What does "stopping power" mean, Nova? I know that you are utterly uninformed about this subject so I don't think we need to take your rifle discussions very seriously. "Guns" do not "jam". What, 7.62mm as opposed to 5.56mm NATO? Great. What a selling point. THE WORD IS "LEGIONARY!" A "Legionnaire" is a soldier of the French Foreign Legion. What is wrong with you? You want us to take you seriously and ignore Craig for "lying" but even your language belies that you have no idea what you are talking about. It's also interesting to note that while Craig has conceded debate, revised his position and admitted errors of judgement, when you have been proven wrong you simply desert the thread and then turn up in another spouting the same rubbish. Sure, but you could never field elephants in the numbers required to do that. The logistics alone are prohibitive. What you are saying is akin to, "Hey, if we could make a man-portable particle beam weapon, infantry could defeat tanks!" Yes, they could, but you can't get a man-portable particle beam, which moots the point. You see?

Please, read the law. C-250 simply extends the hate speech law to cover homosexuals. Under that same law, Ernst Zundel is in prison because he wrote a book that questions the extent of the Holocaust. That's all. You have not seen any prosecutions because the Senate has not ratified C-250 yet. Please don't accuse me of hysteria when it's obvious that you are completely unfamiliar with the material. I'll re-post this for you, but this is the last time. You will have to pay attention in future.