Black Dog

Those types of decisions are entirely consistent with the principles of the First Amendment, as such displays send teh message that the state is endorsing a specific religious viewpoint. The display of religious symbols and the spread of religious messages belongs to the churches. And let's not forget the bigest abortionist of all: God. Every year millions of fertilized eggs spontaneously abort or fail to implant on the uterine walls. These loss of these potential lives is the result of the machinations of a liberal activist Supreme Being. Protest abortion: picket a church.

Defined by who? According to you, marriage is a religious matter. Fine. But no one is telling churche sto alter their definition of marriage. The issue is the legal definition of marriage, as used by the state to define civil contracts between individuals. August's chamapgne analogy is very accurate. No, you're not. Once gay marriages are recognized by the state, churches will still retain the right to refuse to acknowledge or participate in gay unions If it looks like a duck... Freedom of expression is a double edged sword. They retain the right to hld such events and you retain the right to express your distaste for such events, and to not watch them.

It's understood that the provisions of the Constitution regarding religion prohibit the adoption of a particular religion as official, but also requires government to avoid any involvement in religion. (Jefferson's wall of seperation.) You made a lot of hysterical claims of "activist judges" using the state to suppress religious speech, but haven't really provided any evidence to show such a thing exists. And you can rant on about "militant secularism", but the fact is, the U.S. was founded as a secular state.

No the argument is based on maintaing a seperation between church and state. I'm not interested in getting into a conversation about abortion. Individuals, regardless of their religious creed, have the right to stand up for whatever it is they believe. But, whether you choose to see it or not, ther'e a historic seperation between religion, which is a private, personal matter and the runnning of the state. Nope. Speaking of red herrings, you've just tossed out another one. The issue is about organizations like the C.C. who's stated goal is to blur the line between church and state. The rest of your rant is so played out as to degenirate into cliche (though I especially love the bit about "leftist judges", by which you must be referring to Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas or William Rehnquist. )

But throne speeches don't really mean anything. This one was just another litany of old Liberal promises. We're not talking legislation here, but platitudes. I expect Layton's not voting against the amendments or for the Liberals, but against Duceppe's and Harper's gratuitous grandstanding. On the other side, Harper's not really interested in getting his amendments through, but just wants to bring the House down. Duceppe: well, if he's willing to sacrifice his party's progressive values on the altar of decentralization, a pox on him. Phaugh. How good a conscience can they be if they are willing to buddy up with the Cons? Opportunistic? Yes. Intelligent? That's debatable. What % of the vote did the CHP get? How many MP's did they send to Ottawa? I disagree. Having the Cons bring down the government would be good for the ND's and the Grits as they would be able to paint the Cons as rigid and uninterested in compromise, only in attaining power.

What was Ontario's situation pre-NDP?

Violence, searches, curfews, checkpoints, the division of land: all are part and parcel of the same problem. What does the last great war have to do with anything? Those would be the principles outlined in the Geneva Conventions and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You've simply never asked about it. In any case, the fact is, Israel has the upper hand in the conflict. Israel kills more Palestinains than vice versa. There's also an argument to be made that the conditions of the occupation are not conducive to creating a perfect Palestinian leadership. But you see, I don't buy the premise that there is a "fixation" on Israel by what you term "the left". So if your premise is fundamentally flawed, I can't very support it. That's bollocks too. While there's a general consensus across the progressive spectrum on the fact of the problem of the occupation, you'll find a great deal of variance in the nature of the crticisms and approaches. Besides, what is "the left"? The queston is whether or not they've been as cautious as they could be. Snipers today can kill from kilometers away. Your language is disingeous. The "residential area" in question was one of the Israli setttlements. While their can be no doubt the attacks were targetting civilians, from the point of view of Hamas or others, the settlers are occupying Palestinian land. So the same logic that Israel applies when bulldozing Palestinian refugee camps can easily apply to attacks on settlements. Really? A google search using the term "Israelis killed in rocket attack" turned up several dozen articles. Interestingly, most le doff with the two killed in the settlement, but further down you find information on Palestinians killed in previous incursions by the Israeli army. I think at this point in the conflict, trying to figure out who's retaliating and who's the victim is a pointless excercise. I maintain, however, that Israel is teh aggressor. Yet now, most Arab nations have signed peace accords. As I mentioned earlier, there hasn't been an Arab-Israeli war in over 30 years. I'm finding your racial characterizations increasingly difficult to ignore, and especially ironic in light of your hand-wringing over the precieved antisemetism of the left. It also makes for a bad basis for an argument. By the same token it can be said that the Palestinians are reacting against Israel's occupation. Maybe if they pulled out of the OT, stopped trying to ethnically cleanse the OT, they'd meet with a more receptive response. (Oh wait, I forgot: to you them Ay-rabs are all fundamentally bloodthirsty, Jew-hating maniacs). Be that as it may, it's very existence still destroys your point that a Palestinain state would inevitably turn into Syria. Whatever. Consider everybody condemned by me unless explicitly endorsed. Happy? Some actual evidence, like a statement or anything whatsoever by some of th epeople you so resoundingly condemn, would be helpful. Not just more of your opinion. The point is, you don't focus on anybody. You pay lip service to other places to make rhetorical points, not because you give a crap. I've not seen any posts by you bemoaning the fate of the people oppressed by India, or Syria, or Russia or anywhere unless you bring it up as a weapon in the Israel-Palestine debate. Nor do I see any condemnation of western nations that support regimes in Egypt, Pakistan, Saud Arabia and elsewhere. You're crying crocodile tears. As does the post-colonial legacy of despotic, oppressive regimes installed and backed by western nations, which have created environments where religious extremism has flourished and prevented the development of Arab and Muslim cultures. No, it's an indictment of my schedule.

It's interesting, because one could easily employ the same logic to justify suicide bombing. Indeed, I've run into this elsewhere, where attempts to look at context and such are painted as "defending terrorism". Tthe key difference between your path and mine is that I deplore and condemn acts of terrorism, but use context to explore the causes. You, on the other hand, would use the context or circumstances to excuse or rationalize terror. Your argument boils down to a plea to sympathy: that we can't judge Israel, because we can't possibly understand their circumstances. That is, of course, crap. Democracies are expected to adhere to certain principles. These principles should be upheld regardless of circumstances, as they are the basis upon which the very notion of liberal democracy rests. Basically, you can't crap all over basic things like human rights and still go around callling yourself a democracy. I get really tired of people ascribing points of view to me that I've never articulated. You're putting words in my mouth in order to bolster your own morally untenable position. "You guys on the left" dioesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot, as "the left" is not monolithic, nor am I the official spokesman for it. But you do make an interesting point regarding the disparity in strength and organization between the two sides. I would argue that Israel's superiority means they also have a greater responsibility for operating with caution. For instance, if Israel wants to kill one person, is it necessary to use a helicopter to launch rockets into a crowd? If they have the ability to shoot 15 year old girls in the head, surely they could find more efficient means of carrying out their dubious extra-judicial murders. Israel is the aggressor. They are the occupying power, They are the one's colonizing the territories with their continued settlement building, wall construction, and land seizures. That's the instigation. If we're going to dredge up the history, at least have the honesty to include the bit about how the state of Israel was imposed upon the residents of the area by foreign powers. The main reason being, the western countries didn't want to end up with an influx of Jews. In other words, it would be just like Israel. Oh? That's not what the Palestinian Constitution says. I I've said over and over again that I, nor do activists, dictate the headlines or where international attention is focused. I'm pleased to see you take some interest, but would also like to point out that Amensty International does yeoman's work all over the world trying to bring this type of stuff to the world's attention. if it wasn't for them, many global tragedies would be completely unheard of. So they are a good example of why your argument that "the left hates Israel and focuses on them exclusively" is bunk. AI is nominally non-partisan, but inarguably a progressive organization. Oh, and they also talk a lot about Israel. I'd like to see some evidence to support your outrageous conclusion. I still find it sad that you can focus so much vitriol on the left, while sparing those from your end of the poliical spectrum, including many responsible for alllowing human tragedies to occur. I guess you expect more from a kid with a mohawk at a peace march than you do of, say, the President of the United States. There's very few viable African democracies: does that mean Afaricans are culturally unable to form democracies? For some one who is droning on about "looking at the context", you sure are selective about when you decide to do so. But I guess making culturally-biased assumptions is easier than asking tricky questions about how so many Arab countries ended up as dictatorships. As I pointed out, the very fact of the occupation makes Israel the aggressor. What's stopping you from doing so? I can't say heard anything about the story in question. Anyway, given the disparity between Palestinian and Israli casualties, is it any wonder there's more sad stories from Gaza and the West Bank? There's simply more stories to tell.

Two girls, two shots to the head Talk to me some more about the "unpleasant applications of force" that result in teenage girls spilling their brains onto their kitchen floors. Tell me how this makes Israel safer. And whle you're busy trying to cook up some more excuses, chew on this: No peace process: Sharon aide There it is, from the horse's mouth: no peaceful settlement, no negotiation. They're not interested.

Actually, I'm the only one showing any consistency. The actions of Israel with respect to its Palestinian population have been overwhelmingly inappropriate. Whether other nations have behaved teh same way is irrelevant: it's wrong when Israel does it, it's wrong when Syria does it and it's wrong if Canada were to do it. One standard. No excuses. Israel has been using "unpleasant applications of force" to "resolve" the question of Palestinian "terror" for a while. What's resulted has been a cycle of violence where Israel has the upper hand due to its military superiority. In other words, Israel's policies not significantly changed the nature of the so-called "threat" to it. The only explanations for the continuation of such a blatantly flawed set of policies is either stubborness or stupidity. Of course the alternative explanation is that Israel's polices are not defensive, but part of a plan to marginalize and ultimately destroy or displace the Palestinian population in the OT and turn the land into Eretz Israel. How so? If the Palestinians had a viable state, what's to say they wouldn't develop? Or are you simply assuming that brown people don't know how to run themselves? Could it be that so much attention is fixed on Israel precisely because of what I stated earlier, that being that, while not the worst, Israel is definitely behaving in a manner inconsistent with the way democracies should behave. Let's take a trip in the way back machine to the 1980's, when South African apartheid was a major cause. Africa is rife with totalitarian states and tribal, ethnic and religious conflicts and countless examples of human rights violations. Yet the world's eyes turned to South Africa, a western-style country that was not the worst-behaved nation in Africa, let alone the world. Why? Was it because the mainstream "liberal" media has an anti-Anglo/Dutch bias? Or is something else at work? Putting aside what's obviously a racially-based assumption, is it therefore better to let Israel ethnically cleanse the Palestinians than risk a failed Palestinian state? We should simply accept crimes against humanity? Really your logic is quite alien to me. Yu didn't show the resolution was one sided. You cast aspersions, made assumptions and generally shrugged off what, on viewing of the full text, was an even-handed censure of violence in the region. You're either unwilling or unable to admit that US defense of Israel, as well as Israeli actions vis avis the Palestinians, are cynically motivated and morally indefensible. That's why you keep coming back to terms like "hatred". I expect you'll probaby play the antisemetism card again soon.

I think we have a winner in the worst post ever awards. Furthermore, I've seen many get schooled by Hugo (including myself), but have never witnessed such a sound thrashing. If we had a Hall of Fame, Hugo's post above would be in. Sir, my hat is off. And by the way, insults and foul language (including terms like "faggot") are beyond the borders of acceptable debate. Given that this poster has nothing to offer beyond that, I think we can safely boot this "Marine" back to the confines of his mom's basement from whence he came.

It's also worth pointing out again that the ACLU was prevented from releasing the text of its lawsuit challenging aspects of the Patriot Act because the government claimed it would violate secrecy provisions of the act The key differnece being the war Measures Act was struck down. I disagree with the first point. I expect Patriot was sitting on the shelf for some time prior to 9-11. That event simply gave the government the right impetus to expand the powers of law enforcement beyond their usual range. In Las Vegas, police used a FISA warrant to monitor the activities of a strip club owner. The FBI ordered all journalists that have ever written about computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, to turn over their information under the auspices of the Patriot Act. In April, 2004, a Muslim Idaho man went on trial on charges of supporting terrorism by maintaining some web sites (among many he assisted) that supported violent activities. This type of "guilt by association" was resurrected by the 1996 "anti-terrorism" act signed by President Clinton, but was further expanded under the Patriot Act In May 2004, the FBI cordoned off the entire block of a University of Buffalo associate art professor's house, impounding his computers, manuscripts, books, equipment for further analysis and The Buffalo Health Department temporarily condemned the house as a health risk after suspicious vials and bacterial cultures were discovered at his home. The professor, whose art involves the use of biology equipment as part of a project educating the public about the politics of biotechnology was charged with violations under the Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act which was expanded by the USA Patriot Act. The maintainer of a TV-show fan website was charged with copyright infringement after the MPAA directed the FBI to obtain records from the site's Internet service provider about the site under the USA PATRIOT Act Beyond the above examples, in September 2003, the New York Times reported that a study by Congress showed hundreds of cases where the Patriot Act was used to investigate non-terrorist crimes. Secrecy and a state hungry for expanded powers are among the hallmarks of totalitarianism. Americans who believe they can surrender freedoms for security will soon find they have neither.

See, this would only work if i felt the invocation of the War Measures Act was an appopriate response to the FLQ crisis. I don't ,so you don't really have an argument. I would agree that imprisoning an entire population in poverty-ridden reservations under military control while enganging in an illegal campaign of collective punishment and expansionism is "extraordinary". What I also find extraordinary is the lengths that people who claim to defend freedom and humanity can go to justify certain crimes. What you're practicing is called moral relevativism; that is, the selective application of moral principles. No, because it's irrelevant. The issue is whether Israel behaves in a manner consistent with the principles of a western-style liberal democracy. Wiggling away again, eh? Funny, first you say "the US would not have vetoed a resolution which "condemned acts of terror" unless it was one-sidedly aimed at Israel and ignored Palestinian terrorism..." Then, when shown that the resolution in fact demanded an end to acts of violence across the board, you wiggle away by impunging the motives of the resoluitions authours in order to justify the double-standard that favours Israel. You're quite the contortionist.

Leave your sister out of this.

I'll not bother with you anymore, as you've not responded to any points, nor do I expect you have the brains to carry on a reasonded debate. Unlike Hugo, I expect you probably are a jarhead. You're too dumb to be anything but.

The insurgency is predominately homegrown, as this report from an Iraqi newspaper details: An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups I already detailed some of the passages in the PA that can be used to subvert civil liberties. As I already sstated: many of these provisions and others are used frequently—though the details are blacked out. In most cases, you'd never even know if Patriot has been used against you. Capice?

Iraqis fighting alongside the occupation forces are considered collaborators. That's why Iraqi police and armed forces have been targets of the insurgency. As for these big offensives, we'll have to see if anything cmes from them. The strategic advantage of an indiginous guerilla force is its ability to disappear into the general populace. Major offenses in urban areas usually result in plenty of dead noncombatants, another factor that works in the insurgents favour. Given these factors, I doubt any military operatins, whether by U.S. forces or Iraqi proxies, will be successful. So long as the insurgency maintains a decent level of popular local support, it will be unbeatable. In the last major offensive in Fallujah, the Marines were beat back and order was only restored when security was turned over to a force made up largey of ex-Saddam military and insurgents. As forthe doemstic economic situation, using Canada to make a comparison favourable to the U.S. is silly. The U.S. economy is, and always has been, many, many times larger than Canada's. A better way would be to look at the U.S.'s own economic outlook. Let's start with the defecit. This year's deficit was a record $477 billion, or 4.5 percent of GDP. Now, if Bush wins and then decides to keep cutting taxes, or at least makes the tax cuts now set to expire permenant, the result would be deficits of around $300 billon a year for the foreseeable future, absent spending cuts. (By the way, before anyone starts harping on about the recession being to blame for the declining economic performance, note that, since the Congressional Budget Office issued budget projections in August, 2003, its 10-year accumulated deficit estimate has increased by $1 trillion - about 70 percent of which result of new spending.) Another, less publicized problem is the ever-shrinking revenues the government is taking in: the CBO has 2004 US government revenues at 15.8 percent of the economy in 2004, the lowest since 1950, while income tax revenues will be 8 percent of the economy, the lowest since 1942. It's hard to imagine a government that could manage to fight a costly war on terror and provide decent social programs like basic education while struggling with a mammoth defecit and a shrinking pool of revenue. Then there's the matter of rising household and foreign debt, declining wages, lost jobs, etc. etc. Spent? Yes. Well spent? Not really. Well, since they've never formed the government, the answer is zero.

Falwell says evangelical Christians now in control of Republican party The degree to which religious interests affect the political process in the U.S. is frightening. This article shows that Americans have a real choice: on the one hand, the Democrats are inclusive and support individual rights, while the Republicans are willing to use the power of the state to enforce a narrow, religious-based view on the majority. A Bush win this November will lead to further erosion of the seperation of Church and state and the slow slide towards a Taliban-esque religious state.

So, in other words, security concerns trump democratic values. How enlightened. It's a matter of scale. There are threats to Israelis, but none pose a legitimate danger to the continued existence of Israel as a national entity. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories don't have any of the rights you mentioned, living as they do under the de facto rule of a foreign military. That would seem to make sense. As a dodge, yes, it makes perfect sense. The resolution in question.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there are indeed a significant number of Iraqis who feel this way. Millions? I dunno, but the simple fact of the insurgency, it's continued growth and scope, point to a strong anti-occupation sentiment. I misunderstand nothing. The PA is a law that was designed to give the state unprecedented power to subvert civil liberties. Period. Would that be the same legislature that enacted the law in the first place? Talk about trusting the foxes to guard the henhouse. Misconceptions? Such as...? If you think I've made a factual or analytical error, please edify me as to what they might be. However, given your argument is nothing but a stream of jingoistic, incoherent, illogical nonsense, I doubt you have that capacity.

Uhm...has anyone from the federal government said anything about taking Alberta's oil revenue?

No thanks. If I wanted to see monkeys flinging their poo at each other, I'd just go to the zoo or turn to the Discovery Channel.

If you were to show me something of millions and millions of Iraqi's disputing the cause, rather than the few hundred or 1,000 you see on TV, then maybe I would have a change of attitude. But that is not the case! So just how many dead Americans and dead Iraqis will it take for you to see that your government messed up? Because anyone with even the most tenuous grasp of the situation can see it's turned into a imbroglio. The simple fact that the insurgency not only continues to exist, but is also growing, shows that it is finding plenty of recruits and support from Iraqis. Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States, including citizens and permanent residents. Post-Patriot Act, third-party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent, providing the government says it's trying to protect against terrorism. The person made to turn over the records is gagged and cannot disclose the search to anyone. Under PA Section 218, secret searches can be authorized by a secret court without public knowledge or Department of Justice accountability, so long as the government can allege there is any foreign intelligence basis for the search. Section 213 extends "sneak-and-peek" authority from FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act),searches to any criminal search. This allows for secret searches of your home and property without prior notice. Section 214 makes the FISA pen register/trap-and-trace (Pen registers" ascertain phone numbers dialed from a suspect's telephone; "Trap and trace" devices monitor the source of all incoming calls.) power available in both criminal and foreign intelligence investigations, so long as the government merely certifies that the information obtained would be "relevant to an ongoing investigation." The probable-cause requirement in criminal cases is gone. Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: taps specific to no single phone or computer but to every phone or computer the target may use. Section 505 authorizes the attorney general or a delegate to compel holders of your personal records to turn them over to the government, simply by writing a "national security" letter. Scared yet? The big concerns with the PATRIOT Acts are that the state will use the war on terror to gut the warrant requirement or undermine the First Amendment. The best check on such encroachments should be a free and objective judiciary. But many of the Patriot provisions do away with judicial oversight altogether, while others permit judges to act as rubber stamps in hearings where only the government side is represented. The next best check on such encroachments is public scrutiny, but most Americans still do not believe that Patriot has in any way affected them. It's worth noting that many of these provisions and others are used frequently—even if details are blacked out. In most cases, you'd never even know if Patriot has been used against you. Since 1992, Florida is one of the most hotly contested states. That year, Bush Sr took it by a margin of 2 per. Clinton carried Florida in 1996 by 6 per cent. And Bush and Gore split the popular vote down the middle in 2000. So your assertion that Bush would have won anyway is false. You obviously didn't read the relevant part: "The list, which was disproportionately African-American, was rife with inaccuracies. Additionally, in a state with a heavily Republican Cuban population, a technical error caused the names of thousands of Hispanic felons to be excluded from the list. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has asked the Department of Justice to investigate." " Again you miss the key point: "In July, a top GOP official in Michigan gave voice to Republican efforts to squelch minority voter turnout. State Rep. John Pappageorge said, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election."" Note he specifically said Detroit, not Michigan. No, it's dirty and underhanded politics. Again, I'll walk you along in the vain hope that some of this might sink in: "In August, Jeb Bush was at it again—this time having his political appointees at a key county election board hire a law firm with direct connections to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Though the Broward County Elections Board is supposed to be nonpartisan, Bush’s official there hired the law firm Blosser & Sayfie. James Blosser is a top fundraiser for the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Justin Sayfie is co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Broward County. The firm, which was fired after public outrage, was to represent the county in legal challenges should another election debacle occur. It's called "a conlict of interest", sunshine.

You call this democracy?

Bravo Hugo! Because we're an independent nation! Those who are insecure say what you just said I think it has more to do with the simple fact that you don't know the difference. Guess they should have thought about who they were hanging around with, when captured! Affiliation by association! Ah yes, a sure way to build trust, win hearts and minds and show the Iraqi people you're there to help them build a democracy. If attitudes and intellects like yours are common, it's no wonder you've cocked up Iraq. Nope. There's a little thing called the Constitution which theoretically limits the states ability to act against its own citizens. Unfortunately, things like the Patriot Act are chipping away at those protections while idiots like you are too busy filling your head with the latest wisdom from Bill O'Reilly. And how big a price are you willing to pay? I think I've solved the mystery of BigPoop's credulity.