jbg

It's called "war". And the people can expel the Hezbollah guerrillas to enable themselves to have a peaceful life. Instead, they chose to vote them into the Lebanese Parliament. Having reaped the wind, they're sewing the whirlwind.

The British helped out the U.S. in Iraq, what did the British get in return? Nothing. Excuse me. We bailed their sweet arses out in, oh, WW I and II.

Just as I thought, until last night, that Saskatchewan overhunted its seal population.

Hardly. He is an excellent diplomat who remembers that he represents the United States, not the United Nations. I guess Syria and Saudi Arabia are you model government. You'd lose your head posting in this manner in those countries. And who pays for the UN? Please don't use Hitler analogies. They are extremely offensive.

No, but he is fairly representative of the US people. Any Democrat hoping to be elected needs to occupy the right side of the spectrum as well as the left side. Kerry learned that lesson to his sorry. Bill Clinton learned it more successfully and resuscitated his Presidency after a disastrous start.

I apologize. I'm a newbie, having come here after a recent purge at www.freedominion.ca. The only recently used thread of those was "Bolton Demands UN Apology", which does not quite relate to the need to use the UN facilities for vitally needed low-income housing. Perhaps, if Mecca isn't a good place for the UN, how about Tuktuyutok?

That's a scary thought.. Not that Diefenbaker got much done, or that Mulroney did any bureaucracy trimming. Wasn't Mulroney big on patronage?

Cancon rules haven't hurt the profitibilty of radio. The costs involved for that are just not as great. TV is the tricky one. I think you ease foreign restrictions and maintain Cancon rules. The tricky part is if you allow foreign ownership, locally owned outlets would be handicapped by forced adherence to strict CanCon.

I think things will pretty much look like they do now. The English language has always been a unifying factor and now is the world language. I believe that the importance of French will gradually fade for that reason. People don't want to be speaking a dieing and minor world language. Certainly, they won't be able to conduct business in French. I do not see formal merger with the US, since the US probably wants no part of YT, NWT, NU, NL, NS, PEI and/or NB.

That would mean that the present owners would have to divest of their holdings. Don't know how exactly that would work. Don't care what they have to do. Media ownership is far, far too concentrated in Canada. No one should be able to own more than one newspaper, TV or radio station in the same market, exepting specialty channels. If you want the honest truth, I don't even think people should be able to own multiple newspapers. I'd like to see all newspapers operated independantly. I recognize this is not particularly practical, however. That may be a bit too strict. You're markets are small. Easing foreign entry rules, and maybe further liberalizing CanCon would do the trick.

How have Bush's policies been discredited? You would have argued, before the Wall fell, that Reagan's were as well. The United Nations was established for idealistic reasons at the end of WW II. It was supposed to abolish the need for war, and replace warfare and killing with debating. Something has gone dreadfully wrong, and the UN needs to be abolished. The UN's budget is contributed overwhelming by such nations as the US, Japan and the UK. The US contributes about 22% of the UN budget, Japan 19.63%, Germany 9.82%, France 6.50%, the UK 5.57%, Italy 5.09%, Canada 2.57%, Spain 2.53%, and Brazil 2.39%. These nations thus account for over two-thirds of the UN's funding. The donor nations, though, have little influence over the spending of those moneys. Even worse, the recipient nations have no reason to be amenable to policy preferences of the donor nations, since the money comes from the UN. Thus, the donor nations can do little about the petty, despotic and warlike nature of the recipients of aid. Vast Palestinian refugee camps are being sustained by the UN while their inhabitants see little but misery and propaganda. The people are trained to be literally walking bombs, on our dime. Sometimes the Security Council, which in theory is dominated by "important" rather than "polstage stamp" nations passes resolutions that are actually quite fair. The fact that the US and UK have a veto helps insure this. The problem is tha twhen Israel, a member nation, seeks to enforce a resolution, only a US veto prevents a resolution from then condemning Israel. An example is Security Council Resolution 1559: Obviously, Lebanon's territorial integrity is being undermined daily by Syria and Hezbollah. Israel is now trying to expel them. The UN Security Council''s reaction? To try to condemn Israel (prevented only by US veto). The UN has clearly gone from being a debating society to a "hate the West" society. If tinpot dictators countries like Cameroon or Central African Republic want to criticize the West, that's fine (except in view of the non-model handling of their own minorities and own economy). The UN, put simply, has accomplished nothing. Moneys that citizens of democracies are willing to allocate to foreign aid should go directly to needy countries, if possible bypassing their governments. Let that aid money buy influence, not insults.

Read more carefully. My point is that the impact of our foreign aid dollars are diluted two ways going through the UN: Their massive overhead and fraud saps the money; and The receiving nations and people perceive the money as coming from the UN, not from the countries/taxpayers actually putting up the money. That's my point. What war or atrocity has the UN ever stopped, other than preventing Israel or other Western democracies from finishing the job?

Mere rhetoric. I would expect the leader of a country that shares a common language, history and culture with the US, UK and Australia to hold somewhat similar views of the world. The world does not begin and end on the pages of Lé Monde or at the Sorborne. If it did, the world would have ended at Dachau, Buchenwald, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen. Are you saying Canada's natural allies are the Eurocrats in Brussels? Maybe, more likely, the mullahs of Iran or the imams of Saudi Arabia. For once, Harper's standing up for Western values and I'm darn proud of that, same way Bush makes me proud to be an American (though I did vote for Gore the first time around). Is a leader supposed to be a leader, or a mealy-mouthed "neutral"? I'm missing something. Again, the fact that the Nazis were defeated reflected Canadian and American efforts, as well as those of the British and the Aussies. It's called "alliance", not "lockstep". How much freedom does anyone have in Saudi Arabia to be out of "lockstep". How many "dissident" members of Hezbollah survive? Collective punishment? In response to savagery? Are you thinking or echoing what someone told you? Canada was fast on a path to irrelevancy following Chretien/Martin's toadying to Chirac. Canada's heart and home is with the English-speaking democracies.

There is no way that Canada can "stand up" to the most powerful nation in the world. Fortunately, the US is a better neighbor for Canada than the USSR was for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, or less severely Poland, Czecholoslovaki, Hungary, et. al.

With what would the Communist Party of Canada replace monopoly finance capital? I could not find anything on their website at all. Any ideas? With Monopoly money.

They worry, correctly IMHO that a majority CPC government may limit CBC's role to Upper Gopherhole, Saskatchewan. By the way, I had a part in causing the shutdown of www.cbc.ca/forums. Me and a Canadian real estate broker sourced an adverse National Post article. PM me for the PDF (will send via e-mail).

Yes. Israel does not want to shoot at UN peacekeepers in an effort to get at Hezbollah fighters. The UN "peacekeepers" will ignore Hezbollah, in effect serving as their human shields.

This may sound churlish, and I don't want to appear impolite but what is an article by Lou Dobbs (copied in its entirety) doing in a thread about Harper and the Middle East in the Federal Politics category? If the article's not enough, jbg then goes and copies the whole article again to respond. The article isn't coherent or very well written either. It's just loud. No, I copied snippets, as needed, for response purposes.

You've got to be kidding. Israel does not use car bombs targetted at random civilians. I know nothing about the Middle East? Again, they seem to have plenty of explosives and other armaments. Why isn't there money to build decent housing? They started building the wall when the Palestininan Authority could not or would not stop the terror.

Is that CDN or US?

How does my criticizing asinine (IMO and Lou Dobb’s as well) foreign policy make me "against the West" and in favour of communism or fascism? That's a pretty radical leap... In fact, it was a ridiculous statement but "I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." Self-defense, assinine? I'll have to remember that.

They had the ability to send hormone-fueled adolescents, anxious for dalliance with 72 virgins, in to blow up buses, pizza parlors and discoteques. Economics only became a force when we ratcheted up our military spending and they couldn't. You mean views that disagree with yours? Never unequivacolly. (sp) If the people vote in a government that wants to make war, the people make themselves part of the war. There's no longer the excuse that war was forced on them by a dictator. I care, but "humanity" is not a suicide pact. If Hezbollah hides out among civilians, they don't get a free pass. Initially maybe. But he rapidly supported democratic left wingers such as José Napolean Duarte in El Salvador against the rightist thugs in ARENA. And he supported Alfonsin over the right-wing junta Alfonsin replace. Israel didn't tell the Palestinians to mount the Second Intifada, or Arafat and Abbas to be corrupt. They did that on their lonesome.

Yes, the conflict is Canada's business as well as the business of all English-speaking people. The Palestinians are in the business of incinerating helpless and innocent civilians. The Israelis fight wars much the way Canadians and Americans fight them. In short, we have much in common with Israel, nothing in common with the Arab world. Not since the early 1980's when Reagan first forced right-wing dictatorships in Central America and Argentina to yield, and took down the Iron Curtain. Sometimes the obvious must be stated, lest we forget. Your personal attack on Shady shows that you don't have a good response to his/her points. Who was Israel expected to work with? Abbas had and has no power. Since he represents nobody, what good are negotiations with him. And Hamas? Since when has Hamas said they'd sit down at the table with Israel? Neville Chamberlain is a great analogy. He tried to "bargain" with those who had no interest in a compromise deal. Ditto Hamas/Hezbollah. They do not want a "bargain" with Israel.

I will admit that Israel is to a very large extent a forward base of Western interests in the Middle East. Put bluntly, no other country has the requisite degree of political and military stability to ensure that we could be present if needed to protect access to oil. Since the civilized world depends upon oil (and despite some enviros' wet dreams that dependency cannot readily be lifted) we must maintain a regional geographic presence in the Middle East. The fact that Blair and other European leaders have too many Arab or South Asian (read, Muslim) voters to openly advocate this position is irrelevant. The West could not sustain its standard of living long without Israel, or some other forward base. It is far cheaper to maintain Israel than to try to control areas populated by hostile, dangerous populations. Why are you reflexively against the West. Don't you realize you wouldn't be posting freely under a world dominated by communism or fascism of any stripe, including Islamofascism.

Is this a race to the bottom? I've generally been impressed with this site. This thread is degenerating, fast.