Black Dog

No. It's a lot of fuss over something of very little significance. Ultimately, Robinson's decision will be judged by the voters. Always! Ah so you're saying there has been plenty of Tory wrongdoing that has escaped the attention of the press, then? Tell you what, though: instead of blaming the press (who, if they were as biased as some contend, probably wouldn't pass up the opportunity to highlight dissent within the CPC ranks), why don't you show me some examples of this internal criticism? Finally, I should point out that there's been many NDPers to whom I've spoken to who disagree with Robinson's decision to return. I agree that the timing is lousy from a PR standpoint, but believe the possibility of dumping a Liberal is too good to pass up, especially over a dead issue.

Do tell: why not? Here's a candidate with a winning record, experience in the House, no criminal record, and a good shot at unseating a government member: and you're telling me the Cons would turn their nose up? I call B.S. Missing the point much? The media wasn't the question: I was talking about Conservative partisans. So, in response to my hypothetical "how would conservatives react if the situation was reveresed" we have one case of denial and one case of subject changing.

Rape isn't about sex either. Hence its use as a torture technique. And promptly contradicts himself: So what was it, pal? "Honourable intentions" or act of provacation? It can't be both. If it was an act of provacation, then obviously they knew what they were doing would be offensive.

Well, here's the thing: the tapes exist (even Rumsfeld has admitted as much), but the DoD is refusing to release them. Link. Have they been viewed? I don't know. Down the memory hole. Rape, to me, is the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts of any sort. Penetrating someone with a foreign object against their will fits that criteriea. No. I'm simply pointing out that these are NOT simply acts of over zealous grunts. The use of techniques up to and including torture is de facto policy, due to the fact that the Bush Administration has consistently sought legal wiggle-room to expand the limits on what the U.S. military (or the countries it cooperates with) can do to the people it captures. The people charged, while undoubetdly guilty, are scapegoats. Here's the thing: the likliehood of encountering such a situation is so thin as to render the scenario completely implausible. What's more, information extracted under torture is notoriously unreliable.

Referendum hangs in the balance

He stole a ring. he admitted to stealing it. He turned it over and himself in. He pled guilty, and was given a conditional discharge. He was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service, but will not have a criminal record, a sentence the Crown described as "appropriate". Now, if the voters decide that whole business is important enough to make him a bad choice for MP, they can cast their ballots accordingly. And while I may personally not see the wisdom in making a comeback so soon after stepping down, I really don't see what the big frigging deal is. I'll say this much, though: were Svend, say, a straight membe rof the Conservative party, you'd not be hearing a peep from the usual suspects here about his behaviour.

A thief who returned his ill-gotten gains and a criminal without a record. Tempest, meet teapot.

It's not. Even the recent reports which put Canada near the bottom of the barrel still had Canada above teh U.S.A. We've got a lot of work to do on the environment, but to say "Bush's American is better on the evironment then Canada" is to lie.

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos Also: what would you call having a broomstick or chemical light shoved up your ass? If you expect me to buy the "bad apples" explanation, while ignoring the evidence indicating the use of torture techniques was officially sanctioned (see: Gonzalaes memo), then you're dreadfully naive. People who believe in the "ticking time bomb" rationale (to to mention the idea that chemicals or drugs can be used to extract imnformation) have probably been watching too much "24". Plus: once you okay "unconventional means" of any sort, you thro wthe door wide open. After all, why wait for the doctors to rrive with he sodium pentathol when you have a pair of pliers handy right now?

Obviously you haven't heard of Abu Ghraib where Iraqi detainees (including women and boys) were raped by U.S. guards, placed in stress postures, beaten, bitten by dogs etc. etc. And then there's the practice of shipping detainees off to countries where the practices you describe are used. So while I am familiar with your loathing of Muslims, please don't let that interfere with your ability to gather some basic background information on the subject. You know, you might have a point were it not for the dozens of Iraqis with broomsticks and chemical lights stuck up their ass. No some 37 detainee deaths in custody, including at least eight classified as "unresolved homicides", these are just accidents, I'm sure. Then again, no one is displaying the same rah-rah attitude towards "mindless butchery" that you display towards abuse and defilement.

Willful ignorance. Obviously, the U.S. isn't involved in combat in those countries, nor is their prescence necessary for maintaining security for the domestic governments. Unlike Iraq. This is a classic example of why posters should refrain from feeding the obvious trolls. In other news... Huge majority of Iraqis want coalition to go Developing...

I think the attitude behind these incidents and others (such as the continued revalations of abuse at places like Abu Ghirab) are driven by pure arrogance. If, so the reasoning goes, the United Satets is, by definition, morally superior, then no action it takes can be morally questionable. At least, that would appear to be the attitude behind an administration that jumps through all sorts of legal hoops in order to give the president the authority to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture (see: the Gonzales Memo). And I doubt the American public, swamped from birth in their own myths and secure in their cultural chauvanuism, would think to differently (after all, slaughtering dark-skinned foreigners is as American as apple pie). So I don't think complicated quandries like the one you or John McCain would put forward need to be discussed when the equation is so simple: anything "we" do is good; anything "they" do is bad.

Obviously, some folks haven't got the memo. Bin Laden is old news, man. LikeWilliam Huung, he was a one-hit wonder. It's all about the Zarqawi these days. And, once he outlives his usefulness, some other villain will pop up. The annals of U.S. foreign policy over the last few decades read like a crappy B movie serial or a comic book. You have your hero (usually a tough-talkin' U.S president based onthe old cowboy archetype) and you have your villain (always some swarthy types from some place the average American doesn't no buger all about: think Castro, the Sandistas, Noreiga, Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein again and Zarqawi). None of the villains ever pose a real threat to the United States (and thus are easily whupped by the hero), but are simply props trotted out to scare the populace and keep them tying yellow ribbons to their car aeriels instead of looking at the monsters in their own backyard. The twist tis time is that they've found someone elusive enough and mysterious enough that they can bring him out whenever they please, even if he is (in all likelyhood) a pile of bones mouldering away in a cave somewhere.

Did he ever? In his first term, he appointed industry flunkies to key environmental posts, pulled regulations on everything from mining on public lands to how private-sector developers preserve wetlands when developing commercial and residential projects. The administration has routinely ignored or distorted scientific findings to advance its industry-first agenda. And so on. Canada is obviously not much better on many fronts. Many people of all stripes here seem to believe that Paul Martin's Liberals are somehow ahead of their American counterparts. That's not the case. The Liberals are just smaller versions of the Washington business elite, only with the veneer of progressive values, which makes their appalling performance on the enviornment and other issues almost harder to stomach.

Hearing voices can be a symptom of conditions such as schizophrenic disorders, manic depression and psychosis. It could also be that Bush sometimes forgets about his earpiece, and that "God" is really Karl Rove.

Yes. Wrong. The NDP didn't pick the gay marriage fight. Thing is, Dejaralais had a choice too. She knew her parties stance on SSM. She could have abstained and lived happily ever after. She chose to put her political life with the NDP on the line for SSM and paid the price. By taking such a rigid stand against her own party, Dejarlais herself put social issues before the interests of working folks. Let's be clear: Dejaralais was no kicked out of the NDP. She lost her nomination bid and chose to sit as an Independent. It was the Dippers of Churchill who, basically, gave her her walking papers. And if you think Churchil Manitoba is a hotbed of "urban voters in favour of the freedom to choose", well...I dunno what to tell you. NDP policy requires its members to support equality rights. That is one plank in the platform, and there's certainly room for debate on many other issues. I think you're taking an absolutist view based on very thin evidence. When I look at the NDP's platform I see a lot of mentions of economic issues, the environment and, of course social issues. But to say that the party has forsaken the former for the latter based on the defeat of one candidate at the hands of her riding association is a stretch.

Bullshit. First, the 2 million number is the number civilians in both the north and the south between 1954 and 1975: before, during and after U.S. involvement. To pin that stagering number to the anti-war movement is utterly ridiculous. The U.S. defeat in Vietnam was the result of the same poor planning, fuzzy morality and hazy goals as the current clusterf**k in Iraq. Tell that to the planners at the Pentagon. Utterly asinine. The problem is that this enterprise was doomed from the start. Even if one accepts that the motive was noble, there was absolutely no chance of this experiment succeeding. Iraq is not a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. Casting a ballot for a candidate you don't know or a document you haven't read is not democracy. What's more, should Iraq become a democracy (against the odds), it will be because Iraqis make it so, not because some foreign power deems it thus. Any success in Iarq will be in spite of, not because of, George W. Bush and his pack of buffoons.

This example proves once again that people who denounce the use of the term "quagmire" don't know what it means. Literally speaking, a quagmire is a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot. In a geopolitical sense, it's a sticky situatiopn. Iraq is a quagmire freom the U.S. perspective because they are stuck there. They can't leave because of the probability of full-scale civil/sectarian conflict (something our troll here acknowledges in his next post), and they can't reallly stay indefinitely because of the costs (political, economic and in lives) and that their mere prescence contributes to the instability. Germany and Japan post WW2 were not quagmires because the conflict was over by the time the occupation began. There was no large scale resistance to the occupation or democratic reforms in either country, unlike Iraq. The situations are so different in so many ways that they should not be uttered in the same breath. Irony time: All your posts are ad hominems.

This quagmire even has its own "secret war", a la Cambodia. G.I.'s and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border

And I don't see "political correctness" anywhere in the ND's platform. Meh. The NDP hit the doldrums in the late '80s, I'll grant, largely due to internal squabbling over the direction of the pary and questonable leadership decisions. But let's not forget that the ND's have never been taken seriously in the big L liberal and small c conservative media establishment. The popular image of the NDP and the reality have never quite meshed. See you're wrong in saying the NDP make social issues their top priority. What I heard during the last election was affordable housing, child care, democratic reform, health care, education, and job creation. It's difficult to accuse the ND's of focussing on social issues when social issues have dominated the political debate at the expense of more meaningful issues.

Facts on the ground Notwithstanding the fact that they did so only after Iraqis screamed bloody murder over the original plan to privatize and sell off all of Iraq's state-owned industries (including the oil).

's'funny, y'know: people bemoan the lack of principles in politics, the paucity of leadership, th e"flip-floppin" and ass-covering that is the day-to-day routine of pretty much all politicians. Yet the one party so committed to its core principles that it refuses to allow its own members to deviate from them (even at the expense of political clout), they are characterized as fanatics. Better, I suppose to have the ditherers and the flip-floppers in charge. "Working class" interests are not limited to social issues, which is what this is all about. It's unfortunate that social conservatism has come to be identified as a working class trait and thus the purvue of political parties and ideaologies that have the least interest in the economic well-being of the working class.

Well, what does one mean by exist? The contention of the article above is that "Al Qaeda" has become a euphemistic umbrella classification: the most recognized name brand: the "Kleenex" of terrorist organizations. If Al Qaeda is nothing more than Osama bin Laden and a small number of associates, then the threat it poses cannot be significant. That's no to say there's no terrorist threat. There individuals and local terrorist organizations that pose a threat to individuals, but not all Islamic terrorism the work of this shadowy group of evil masterminds.

Wow in addition to being intellectually dishonest, you're also a jerk wad with shoddy reading comprehension skills. A dynamite combo. First: you have in no way shown how my inocuous comments as to the flaws in the Iraqi constitutional process are evidence of "ethocentrism". In truth I doubt you even know what the word means, let alone be capable of explaining how pointing out the obvious flaws in the Iraqi process (flaws that are evident to Iraqis themselves) is evidence of some ideas of ethnic superiority. Certainly the quote you cited is no evidence of such. Now if i were to make a judment on how the process should go, I would, off the top, say it would be best if all parties had a common goal, and were willing to address and compromise on those issues that are preventing that goal from being reached. The Iraqi process is simply an arena for the various ethnic/sectarian and religious groups to jockey for position to determine who will benefit most from the new Iraq: there's no common goal, no vision of the "new Iraq" that each group can endorse. Just a winner-take-all scramble in which no one is willing to offering any significant concessions to their foes. Calling such a stew a recipe for disaster (including political failure and outright civil war) isn't ethnocentrism: it's plain common sense.

Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive?