Black Dog

Does that include the creation of Israel by a UN mandate? Here's a selection of some recent resolutions vetoed by the US on Israel's behalf: On closer examination, you're right: these demands are completely unreasonable! Stop violence? Observe human rights? So unfair...

I'd like to see the oil company that pays people's mortgages. If you meant the NEP hurt the oil industry and therefore Alberta's economy, you might be on to something. But blaming Trudeau and the NEP for all of Alberta's woes during that period is a tired canard.

Sorry, but banks foreclosing on homes is a far cry from state seizure of property. Besdies, that was almost 25 years ago: Alberta is still the richest province in the country. Maybe it's time to let it go.

Well, given that Kerry is still within a few points of Bush in the polls (most polls have him withing 3 points), I don't see what the fuss is about. Still, Bush wil be declared the winner of the debate, whethe rhe wins it or not. So sayeth Krugman.

WTF?? When did Trudeau or Qubec ever expropriate the property of Albertans?

dear thelonius Tell me: who died and made you god? It must be nice to be so smug as to advocate the murder of people you find undesirable. What next? Mandatory sterilization of certian minorities? :angry: Your attitude towards fellow human beings is appalling. Give your head a shake. Obviously you're not maying attention. Safe injections site work. Dozens of European cities have them and opilots are operational in Australia as well as Vancouver. SIS's are eeffective in reducing public disorder problems associated with drug use, as well as giving addicts information about drugs and health care, treatment referrals, and access to medical staff. That's prety fallacious reasoning. Advocating a new approach a problem to replace an ineffective status quo is not an endorsment of the problem.

It's really not that tough to grasp. Think of it more like giving police the power to use force when making an arrest. Doe sthat power mean cops can simply shoot any suspect they please? No. It merely gives them that option to use as a last resort. That was the intent of the Iraq vote: to give the president the power to authorize the use of force, not an endorsment of the use of force.

Nick Berg

Yes, Naomi Klein went to Iraq in an attempt to wrest power away from Allawi and set herself up as Empress of No Logostan. When in actuallity she wrote a fantastic article positing that the real driver behind the insurgency is not, as some allege, religious fanaticism or antisemetism, but rather economic factors stemming from the neocon takeover of Iraq's economy. Baghdad Year Zero

Kerry's position on Iraq has been consistent from Day One. Kerry had called for a broad international coalition to confront Saddam Hussein, and going to war only as a last resort. Like most senators, he thought Bush needed the authority - it passed the Senate 77-23, and Kerry was one of 29 Democrats who supported it. However, Kerry believes Bush misused that authority. Bush is a horrible orator. Even if one puts aside his garbled syntax, he deliver's his speeches flatly, staring ahead at the teleprompter, eyes glazed over. But then, maybe that's the appeal.

Speaking of the insurgency, here's a fascinating article from an Iraqi newspaper inventorying militant groups.

The distinction vanishes once you realize there's fundamentally no difference between intending to kill innocents and knowingly engaging in an action that will likely result in innocent deaths. For example, the helicopter pilot launching a missile at targets in a residential area knows there is a high probablility such an action would result in innocent deaths. As such, the pilot is as culpable in any innocent deaths that occur as sure as if he had taken aim at innocents intentionaly.

First: please prove to me that people are going to Iraq because it's a sexy place to be. You're talking out of your ass. Second: it's not an either/or proposition. One can be as concerened for the aid worker held hostage in Iraq as they are for the refugee in Sudan.

So? Respect for human rights should be a universal characteristic of liberal democracies. Or are we to say because Israel faces certain security issues (I'll leave the question of whether these issues are, again, a symptom of a broader problem), they should be allowed to suspend whatever pretext of respect for human rights and dignity and behave like Syria or any other totalitarian, antidemocratic, state? Yes. But not near the scale as what we see in Israel. Trudeau, for example, didn't bomb Quebec City, didn't demolish the homes of seperatists and hand the land over to Anglophone federalists. What doe sthis have to do with the left? Leftists don't own the media, nor do they dictate its content. major corporations do. Now I know I'm not responsible for your inability to understand nuance, but I'm really sick of this b.s. argument. Trying to understand the causes of terrorism is not "excusing" it. As for your racist construct("massive sea of vicious, hostile Arabs "), Israel has signed peace treaties with most of its Arab neighbours. There hasn't been an Arab Israeli war for more han 25 years. Since you've been unable to show any instances of the people you are attacking "pass(ing) over mass slaughter and torture ", your premise is flawed. "Provoked by Palestinian violence": bollocks. Funny how the only reason people are aware of these activities is through the efforts of dilligent humanitarian workers. It's never the western media (again, not left) or the political establishment. I agree: there should be mopre outrgage over global injustice. When can we expect to hear it from the right? This is the same old bullshit argument that claims Israel's surival is hanging by a thread. It's a lie. Israel has the largest, most modern military in the region, the unflinching backing of a global superpower, and nuclear weapons with which to defend itself. 3 million poverty stricken Palestinians confined to tiny patches of land are no threat to the existence of Israel. You are making excuses for state terroism. Your personal anecdotes are worth squat to me. Whatever. So your logic is: it's better to excuse all atrocities than to call attention to some. Really, I can't imagine what kind of moral and intellectual gymnastics are required to reach such a dubious conclusion. Oh and this: and this... are the products of a noxious, ignorant mind. I would suggest that we refrain from giving this piece of crap the time of day. How about the videos (still unreleased) featuring guards sodomizing young boys and raping the women? How about the beatings, dog attacks, sexual assaults? You are the one with no clue. US intelligence officers told the Red Cross that between 70 and 90 per cent of imnates were civilians arrested by mistake. The United Nations has no powers beyond what is granted to it by its membership. Most power rests with the Security Council. The land in question (west bank and gaza) was, at the time, occupied by Jordan and Egypt, which lost the land in the 1967 war. Furthermore, most Palestinians in the territories are descendents of refugees who fled or were expelled afte rIsrael's formation.

We've been through this argument before. It was hogwash then, it's hogwash now. I don't know why you feel compelled to impugn the motives of civilians in Iraq (particularly humanitarian workers: contractors out for filthy lucre seem to escape your ire), but I find the notion that we must leave fellow humans to twist in the wind totally abhorrent.

Killing prisoners is a smuch a part of war time as killing civilians. In Vietnam, US troops tossed Viet Cong prisoners out of helicoperts. During World War 2, both Allied and Axis forces executed prisoners. And one need only look at Abu Ghirab to see that mistreatment of prisoners (including killing) is taking place on all sides in Iraq. So why are some people outraged over the execution of prisoners, yet so balse about civilian deaths ("collateral damage")?

45 per cent of Americans accept Biblical account of creation That's still a frightful level of ignorance. But anyway, moving right along: why would you believe Bush? The guy flip-flops more than a fish on dry land: Flip Flopper in Chief Kerry consistent

Advertisers seldom sell products. If the sole purpose of advertising is to inform people of their choices, then we wouldn't be seeing billion-dollar glitzy ad campaigns. Advertisers sell lifestyles, power, status, presitige and other intangeibles. Ads are designed to play on these desires, the implication being that purchase of the product is the gateway to status etc. Simply put, while purchases made are indeed the product of free choice, the role of advertising is to influence those choices and crate markets for products based on their ability to deliver satisfaction beyond simple material benefits.

Well, the question is is it a real or precieved want? Certianly viewers are to blame for bad choices, but someone else foists these choices upon them. As I said, it's a cycle and there's plenty of blame to go around. But I think TV is giving us a historically unprecedented amount of crap, with a broader reach than ever before. Not everyone went to the cockfighst 100 years ago, but just about everyone has a TV.

Meaningless. A simple reflection of the tendency of AMericans to rally round their national symbols when threatened. I guess that means 10 per cent of the population were clued in enough to know that Bush, after running like a dog on 9-11, fumbling the intelligence leading up to the attack and then expoliting it for politicla gain (ie. Iraq), was selling them a bill of goods. Most Americans...would that be the less than 50 per cent voting for Bush? Latest polls have Bush up by 3 points on Kerry, whil his overall job performance rating is around 47 per cent. Half opf Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction and think it's time for a change. Meanwhile the defecit keeps growing and is projected to continue to swell, the economy remains sluggish, millions are still out of work... The tax cuts are a con. The majority of Americans also believe God created man and the universe 10,000 years ago. Also, as polls are showing, the majority of Americans don't side with Bush. Izzat so? By all means, please post your copy of the "Insurgents Handbook" detailing these schemes. Otherwise, read some of these analyises of the insurgency. Iraqi Insurgency Groups A bazaar of violence.

But the speed comes at the price of depth, context and information. In the race to get it out first, such matters fall by the way side. To me, the saddest thing about the rise of TV news is that newspapers, instead of playing to the strengths of the written word, which allows more thought and analysis, are instead turning into print versions of TV: superficial and decontextualized, bite-sized tidbits for your infotainment needs. Eisenhower warned of the rise of the military industrial complex. What we have is an even more sinister entity: the military-industrial-entertainment-information complex. Yikes. the question is "what to the people want?" You certainly can never go broke by pandering to th elowest common demoinator, which is what advertisers (the people who really drive television content) do. So it becomes a cycle whereby people expect-nay, demand!- nothing but drivel from TV, which obliges, which in turn lowers expectations further. The audience and society loses, while the media conglomorates and advertisers make out like bandits.

And that, to me, is the scariest thing of all.

But really: why should they. We'r etalking partisan politics, which is ugly. I think much of the hatred of Bush come sfrom his dubious election, his handling of 9-11 and cynical exploitation thereof, the war on Iraq, the shoddy economy, his religious ties and his perpetual shit-eating grin. The list goes on. There is an argument and that's, even if there are Al-Qaedea elements in Iraq, the resistance is not monolithic, does not have a central command, is not even ideologically heterogenous. And yet according to his own discharge papers, there is no record that he did any training whatsoever after May 1972. Indeed, there is no record that Bush performed any Guard service in Alabama at all. In 2000, a group of veterans offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama Guard service. Of the estimated 600 to 700 Guardsmen who were in Bush's unit, not a single person came forward. In 1973 Bush returned to his Houston Guard unit, but in May of that year his commanders could not complete his annual officer effectiveness rating report because, they wrote, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report." His public records paint a portrait of a Guardsman who, with the cooperation of his Texas Air National Guard superiors, simply flouted regulation after regulation indifferent to his obligation to serve.

By the way, I'd be interested to read your take on this: Who seized Simona Torretta? I wouldn't put such a thing past the old Saddamite Allawi.

See: try and bring some intellectual honsety into a debate stemming from Bill O'Reilly, and this is the thanks I get. Honestly, it's like you take debating lessons from Bill himself. I haven't made any arguments, just presented facts to counter the partisan propaganda of FoxNews, propaganda explicitly aimed at getting Bush reelected. If you'd care to dispute the facts, maybe articulate why they are incorrect, go ahead. But garbage like: Well honestly you do seem to like defending them. doesn't really prove anything beyond your own limitations as a debater. Because I find the term "Al Qaeda" has become a catch-all, used to describe what is a highly fragmented and idelogically heterogenous insurgent movement. It's an attempt to turn Al Qaeda into an all-powerful, long-armed bogey man. In other words, it's just plain dishonest.