Black Dog

The link butoon is the "http://" one above the post window.+

Wow. Insightful. And who gives a crap about Don Martin?

I don't know. But the idea that the countless lives lost in the service of protecting America's interests abroad was somehow inevitable is unfathomable, as is the notion that its the west's job top sheperhed the poor dark-skinned people's of the globe into a brighter future by any means necessary. Can you even acknowledge the crimes the U.S has perpertrated? The glaring disconnect between its stated aims and the actual course of action it takes and means employed to get there? Can you do even that? A total simplification and misrepresentation of the criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.

My point is the U.S did "sit back" and let Saddam butcher his people (hell, they helped him do it). Under the guise of fighting Communism, they supported governments in ElSalvador, Niciragua and Chile that murdered tens of thousands and committed untold atrocities. They stood idly by while the Soviets did their worst, anmd continue to allow China's ongoing record of brutal human rights vilolations go unremarked as long as the cheap consumer goods keep coming. What about the evil regimes the U.S. and the west supported? Do they get a free pass in your book, for I see no denuciation of the realpolitik that drives the U.S.A's foreign policy? Are you naive enough to belive Washington's rhetoric about supporting human rights, freedom and democracy, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary? How does one so callously assign a value to human life so as to be able to say "we killed a million, but they might have killed two million, so we are justified?" I will not answer your question as I refuse to accept your framing in terms of good and evil. "Evil" is jusged by its actions. Was Tiger Force, the elite American unit that slaughtered hundreds of old men, women and children during Vietnam, a force for good merely by virtue of not being the communists?

The illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos claimed an estimated 950,000 civilian casualties and ushered in the era of Khmer Rouge (who were later overthrown by the Vietnemese Communists). Civilian casualties in the Vietnam war are estimated at between 587,000 and one million. The war against Iraq in 1991 killed 200,000 people and the subsequent economic sanctions spelled death for some 350,000 to 500,000 children and helped bolster Saddam's regime. Current civilian casualty figures in Iraq have topped 10,000. The bombing of Afghanistan cost an additional 3500+ civilian deaths. Then there's the secret operations, like the United States supported and arming of government death squads in El Salvador's civil war from 1980 to 1992, which left 75,000 people dead. the support of Suharto in Indonesia, who's invasion of East Timor cost more than 200,000 lives and so on and so on.... Now I'll await the inevitable rebuttal that all those dead people would have been even really dead under the Communists/Saddam, etc.

As the Ontario Court of Appeal said: "The right to marry becomes meaningless if you cannot chose the person you wish to be spouse." Why is this wriiter promoting sham marriages? Anyway, the rest of the article is a good summary of the anti-gay marriage side of the debate: a lot of bluster and fear mongering, not much substance. For example, the authour warns of the "consequenses to our society" and that gay marriage will threaten the underpinings of society. But he doesn't say how or why. Factor in his erroneous assertion that the U.S. is a nation founded on specific religious beliefs and you end up with a pretty flaccid defence of marriage.

Sure, just as there are millions of dead Vietnamese, Cambodians, Iraqis etc who would testify to the evils of the US military if they could. Subjective indeed.

Read the rules and guidelines thread.

Hardly an endorsement of the perks of a strong military.

What about straight marriages where one or both members are biologically incapable of having kids? Or maybe they just don't want them. In that case, in your view, should we strip the right to marry from these people? As to your view that gays wouldn't want to adopt, then why have they been fighting for that right as well? Statements like: "You can't tell me that a person prefers adopting a kid over having their own." show you don't know a lot about the subject of adoption. The idea that marriage is soley for procreation is ludicrious. If marriage serves any purpose, it's to stregnthen society by creating bonds between individuals and families. Prove it. Prove it. I've seen this allegation (regarding the age of consent) many times with no supporting evidence. So back it up. "Thorny issue"? There is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. The vast majority of pedophiles are straight, carry on with heterosexual relationships and self-identify as heterosexual. [ Prove it. (And the NP as "leading" newspaper? You must be an American.) What "propaganda" and "endorsement". Read the rest of this thread, as the disticnction has been discussed at length. No one's "taking" anything away from anyone. As I said before, giving 10 per cent of the population the same rights as the remaining 90 per cent takes nothing away from the majority, nor does it constitute 'special" rights. Geez..... Again, the definitions of words change all the time. Less than 100 years ago marriage was defined as the union between a man and woman of the same skin colour. the definitin changed as mixed-race marriages became accepted. Also, gay marriage would have no impact whatsoever on religious marriages. That's for the gay community to decide, not you. This is, and continues to be, the most condescending crap argument I've ever read on this subject.

Anyone else see the irony in Bush using 9-11 for political gain at the same time as his administration drags its feet on the 9-11 probe? I'd like to see some evidence to back this up. It's not "liberals" who are upset. It's also the families of people who actually died that day. And the footage isn't just heart warming images of the flag, but includes footage of human remains being removed from the debris.

Oh, absolutely. Indeed, 99.9% of what we read here is opinion. Interestingly enough, here's an interesting article on DARPA.

As d4dev said, why "Islamic" weaponry. After all, Isreal, India and other non-Islamic nations have nukes too. What's good for the goose.... Global nuclear disarmament monitored by an international, multilateral body.

It's interesting that you point out the U.S., as that nation is a perfect example of why a large, powerful military is a bad thing. Aside from guzzling trillions of dollars of taxpayer funds each year, the U.S.'s bloated military has become a powerful political force, one that has far outstripped the civilian checks placed on it by the founding fathers who were extremely leery of having a standing army. Indeed, Eisenhower's prediction of the rise of the military-industrial complex has come to pass. The Pentagon (budget), Congress (campaign contributions) and industry (lucrative contracts) have vested interest in maintaing a huge military, none of which have much to do with protecting the American people. Of course there are countless other examples across the globe of how powerful armed forces pose a direct threat to democracy. After all, how often do we hear the term "military coup"?

By continuing to play the anti-Bush angle, you're ducking the real issue, while the key questions Sachs asks in both articles remain unanswered. These are all legitimate questions. I find it telling that you never once attempt to deny or disprove allegations of the U.S.'s involvement in Aristide's overthrow.

Oh really? How so? 'cause it sure sounds like an opinion to me.

Fine. Now why is that? You're contradicting yourself. You say you believe rights are unalienable (meaning not to be separated, given away, or taken away), yet then say they should only be allowed if used "correctly". Which is it, and who, in your view, is the arbiter of what constitutes a "correct" application of rights?

If one accepts your premise, it still doesn't answer the question of what happened to change this mindset. I would suggest that the growth of the mass-media, and in particular, television (something Marx nor Smith could have ever dreamed of), as the primary means of disemenating information and providing analysis in western society has made citizens, ignorant, self-absorbed and apathetic. Which raises another question: who benefits from this state of affairs? It's clearly not individuals or society as a whole. Subquestion: who owns the mass media and is therefore responsible for the messages it passes on?

Sachs (who, it should be noted, is a former guru of neoliberal economic policies) has more on the U.S. administrations involvement in the coup. From his first day in office, Bush was ousting Aristide

You guarantee, hey? Well, I'm glad we have your "expert" opinion on the matter.... But this isn't a discussion on NDP policy, it's about Vancouver's SIR and the drug war in general. Lay off the trolling.

Why can't they? If by "promoting strong families" you mean "have and raise children", shall we then deny marriage rights to heterosexuals who can't or won't have kids (indeed, a growing number f couples are choosing not to have kids)? There's also the simple fact that gay couples are just as capable of raising kids as anyone else. Wow, that's scary stuff, tres facsist. Individual rights do indeed form the basis of civil society. However it's not up to society, the government or individuals to pick and choose who is allowed to enjoy certain rights. In the words of the U.S founding fathers: This is utter crap. You have no basis upon which to state that "gay marriage however, is in no way conducive to society and there is no potential to give back to the society that provides these rights". Again, this only holds if you accept the highly suspect premise of marriage as ameans of producing children. I'd like to hear some reasoning as to why marriage strengthens society and how gay marriage would undermine that. Since ninety percent of the population already have the right to marry the informed, consenting adult of their choice, and would even consider that right a fundamental, constitutionally protected right, since when does extending it to the remaining ten percent constitute a "special" right to that remaining ten percent? Elder, I can accept that your opposition to gay marriage is a matter of personal belief. However, the reality is that while allowing civil rights to certain groups may offend some, and at times, even the majority, we have a constitutional government in place whose role is to ensure that powerless, unpopular minorities are protected from the tyranny of the majority.

Oh, I'm sure Bush had a hand in it. But in the White House, policy is very much driven by the unelected officials who advise the President (folks like Paul Wolfowitz and so forth). That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. May I sugest you do a little reading on the subject of past and contemporary U.S. global interventionism? Statements like this aren't worth the time it takes to refute them. Again, when did blame Bush for Haiti's state of affairs?Granted, past administrations in the U.S., as well as countries like France and Canada, have played a big role in Haitis poverty through their past support of the corrupt and repressive Duvalier regimes and brutal economic measures imposed under the guise of free trade, including the blocking of millions of dollars in aid. Really, all the articles I've posted above have considerable background on the whole Haiti issue, including the reasons for its crushing poverty. I would suggest you actually read up on the subject rather than hurling accusations that this is merely a vehicle for peddling hatred of Bush. If anything, the crushing silence from the neo-cons on this issue is telling. One year ago, we were told that the U.S. had to invade Iraq, first based on the no discredited WMD story and then on the basis of humanitarian intervention. And yet, the same hawks (both in the world and on this board) who touted th einvasion and occupation of Iraq as a means of bringing freedom and democracy to a downtrodden people say nothing when a crisis of democracy and humanity occurs in its very backyard. At best, the U.S. et al is guilty of doing nothing to preserve a democratically elected regime, allowing it to be overrun by thugs, many with ties to dictators of the past. At worst, the U.S aided and abedted what amounts to a coup against Aristide.

Depends: are they screwing? Words aren't set in stone. Meanings change over time and definitions shift with the prevailing winds of social change (why, even the word "gay" had a whole different connotation 100 years ago). Why should the term marriage be any different? No it's not. Were gay marriage legal and we were merely quibbling over what to call it, then you'd be onto something. However, your semantic niggling fails to take into account is that there's no such thing as gay marriage and that existing "civil unions" such as those done in Vermont, aren't enough because they do not extend to same sex couples the full array of rights that heterosexual couples enjoy.

Your being fatuous. You know as well as I do that it's the biases of people like Elsie Wayne and George W. Bush that are turning this into a semantic nightmare by insisting that gay marriage be called something else so as to distinguish it from what can only assumed to be considered the real thing. It's not the words, it's the context they are used in. Surely you can see how flawed the logic of "let's let gays marry, but not call it marriage" is. My point is that, gay or straight, a marriage is a marriage. In other words, not different at all. Before this derailment continues let's start with the definition of marriage and the significance of the gender of its participants. If, as Elder put it, a marriage is "loving, honoring, cherishing for richer or poorer... being there for your loved one when he or she is in need, having a family together, loving that person more than you love yourself, complimenting him or her as he or she compliments you" then the gender of the participants is secondary.

First, the formalized, state-sanctioned relationships between same-sex couples is not (or at least, should not be) different in any way from marriages other than the gender of the participants. Too me, calling them "gay civil unions" instead of "marriages" implies that the former is somehow lesser. It also draws unecessary attention to the singular difference between the two. It's the same kind of "seperate, but equal" thinking that went along with segregation in the U.S.