Black Dog

KK: Nope. I didn't make the statement, it's not up to me to defend it. Afgain: so what? (By the way, I find it interesting that you are the one who answered the call for a source and not the original poster.) Craig regularly posts his opinions in the guise of "facts" and seldom offers any sources. Knowing this, it's entirely appropriate to ask for a some proof of any statement. After all, how can one be expected to form a counter-argument based on someone else's opinion?

KKK, why would I waste my time trying to prove someone else's point for them? If you make a statement on this board (or anywhere else for that matter), the burden of backing it up is on you, not the person you're arguing with.

Uh huh. Even if the bill in question did allow the above (how about providing a link or a source?), can you think of a politician who'd be willing to commit political suicide by allowing such actions? Canadians are a tolerant bunch, that's why most support same sex marriage. However, most would draw the line at such stormtrooper tactics. In other words: it won't happen.

Once again, Israel's apologists assume some sort of pre-existing level playing field wherein Israel flourished by virtue of its own hard work (and not as a result of the post-imperial powers' support of the Israeli state) while the Palestinian people simply lack the good-old fashioned gumption to make their lot better. What rot. If you are referring to the OT, the land doesn't belong to the Israelis. Anything they've built in the territories is based on theft of local resources, favorable government policies towards Jewish settlers (including the use of force by the IDF to make the region safe for settlers including bulldozing palestinian property) and systematic oppression of local populations.

The leading cause of divorce, according to research is financially related stress. Infidelity is in second place. According to whom?

And what do you mean by that? Proof? Didn't think so. Israel was given a state in the desert. The palestinians have been caught between Israel's expanisonist ambitions and the Arab worlds manipulations for decades. They've never had a chance.

Sounds like you and the Taliban would get along. As the past 100 years of drug prohibition have demonstrated, harsh penalties don't solve the problem. Drug addicition is a medical, not a criminal problem and should be treated as such. And if you really want to put drug pushers out of business, you'd call for legalization.

Why?

You mean the man who's job it is to wage the war on drugs is oppossed to liberalized pot laws? I'm shocked....

Oh man, i hope not. A stumbling economy, a costly and divisive foreign occupation, millions of lost jobs, and some B.S. about God in the Pkledge will be the major issue? I sur ehope Americans are smarter than that. The Pledge stood for many years with no God reference, which was added during the height of the '50s' anti-Communist mania. Befiore that, it read, simply: Adding to the irony is the fact that the Pledge's authour was a rabid Socialist.... The court disagrees.

Phaugh. Bias is in the eye of the beholder. Fer example, those of us on the social democrat end of the spectrum look at the National Post and Global as being almost as right-wing as Fox "News". It's a convincing case, as the Post calls it's plays straight from the neoliberal playbook (tax cuts, privatization, yes to the "war on terror", no to drugs, immigrants, pro-Israel...blah blah blah). The big knock against the Pest from the right was the late, unlamented Izzy Asper's support of the Liberals (despite the modern Grits being Liberal in name only). CBC is pretty centrist, the Globe and Mail leans right on fiscal matters, but throws the odd social bone to the left. No matter what, though, the last thing we need is the human cancer that is Rupert Murdoch infecting our national discourse.

This is a joke, right?

Expansionism has grown beyond the simple quest for territory. In the past, empire's conquered and governed. Today's empire's job is to secure the world for it's own economic interests, guarantee markets for goods and products and assure its total political, economic, cultural and military dominance. The better analogy would be to the British Empire.

the European union are transsexuals? Who knew?

Those ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. The war on terror is not winnable. You could wipe out millions of "terrorists" but, like Hydra, more would spring up with more motivation to deal death to your innocents. The path you choose, while cloacked in noble ideas of self-defense, will only ensure the death of more innocents.

Do I detect the faint whiff of...nah? The American empire will fall. I believe the seeds of that downfall are being sown right now, as the nation's leadership has been hijacked by a cabal of ideologically driven headcases interested in nothing more than remaking America and the world in their own image (by force if necessary). As a cresult, the American economy is staggering, it's military forces are being spread thin (Syrai and Iran can breathe safely knowing that American forces are still tied down in Iraq) and it's unilateralist policies are alienating former allies and atagonizing its foes.

I get what you're saying, Watcher, but I don't believe decriminalization will significantly increase demand. It's already so easy to get pot that anyone who wants to smoke it can. Those that don't won't suddenly start sparking up simply because it'll only get you a ticket. Canada needs to explore Amsterdam's model. Nope. Just countering the implication that every pot smoker is a lazy, welfare-collecting layabout. That has got to be the single dumbest "argument" I've read on this board. Uh...huh.

Is that your scientific opinion? The gateway drug premise confuses correlation with causation. Fact is, in cases where people started with pot and moved onto "hard" drugs, there were other factors (usually socio-economic) at work that influenced their choices. The fact is, these people were likely lazy and slovely (BTW, pot doesn't cause brain damage) before tehy got into weed. I know lawyers, accoutants and scientists who smoke pot regularily and function better than most "lucid" individuals. In cases where pot becomes a problem (because there is certainly such a thing as too much) it should be regarded as a medical condition, and not a criminal matter.

I got it from, I believe, Webster's, though that's the commonly accepted definition of terrorism. Terrorism-and I can't understand why this is so hard for you to process- is not necessarily racially, religiously or ideologically motivated. As for political gains made through terrorism, well, without terrorism there'd be no America (the revolutionaries were considered terrorists), and certainly no Israel (Jewish paramilitary groups conducted terrorist operations including bombing hotels and other civilian targets to oust the British). I agree but add the caveat that state terrorism used to maintain a system of inequality and oppression, as the practiced by the IDF in the Occupied Territories, must also cease.

No no no. Of course terrorism wouldn't stop overnight, as the more extremist elements will continue to oppose Israel's very existence. The key to curtailing terrorism is to drain the swamp. Terrorism and anti-Israel sentiment is fueled by the continuing plight of the Palestinian people, including the use of excessive force and collective punishment by Israeli forces. Simply killing every suspected militant you can get your hands on (especially with the disregard the IDF shows for civilians when conducting their assasination operations) won't do a damn thing to improve the situation. For every militant Israel makes a martyr of, more will spring up. Why? Because you can can't kill an idea or a cause. If Israel spent more energy on aiding th ePalestinian people in keeping order and bettering their society instead of bulldozing homes and shooting at ambulances, popular support for militant causes would, eventually, dry up. Nothing exists in a vacum. While it may be nice and simple to think terrorists simply wake up one morning and then decide to blow themselves up on a bus, that's not the way the world works. (I find it interesting that the more militant Israel apologists share the same black-and-white, good-and-evil mentality with the terrorists they hate. Odd.) Non sequiter. Then you really need to read more. Start with a dictionary. terrorism: n. the policy of repressive governments, guerillas etc. of using hijackings, kidnappings, assasinations, etc. as a means to acheive political ends. Terrorism is not predicated on a specific religion or ideology. Nor is terror restricted to killing of civilians. It's a tactic. So if you kill civilians because you are fighting for your country's independence, you are afreedom fighter. But if you shout "Allah akbar" while doing it, you're a terrorist? I've already rebutted your allegations that the Camp David accord was a legitimate peace offer, so I won't go ove rit again. However, I do bristle every time the suffering and horror of the Holocaust is invoked to justify the suffering and horror of the illegal occuopation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As I've said before: the survival of the state of Israel is not in question (most of its former foes, including the PLO, have acknowleged its right to exist).

Well, the issue is clouded because there have been very , very few clinical trials done on marijuana over the years. Not to mention that many of the "facts" that you commonly hear about pot from drug crusaders are no more than paranoid, sensationalist fantasies (the "gateway drug" is a good example). The history of pot prohibition is tainted with such distortions and paranoia. Check out the documentary "Grass", which, though unabashedly pro-weed, gives a good overview of the history of cannabis prohibition. For example: many early anti-pot laws were, if you'll pardon the pun, smokescreens for placing restrictions on racial minorities (pot being extremely popular with Mexican immigrant labourers,black hipsters and other "undesirables" during the '20s). Anyway, it's an interesting subject but at the end of the day, I think the question comes down to: given that pot is so easy to aquire, even after 75 years of prohibition, wouldn't we be better off spending the money we currently throw away in the ultimately unwinnable war on drugs on other things?

Ummm...refugee camps? Hello? One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. First: blanket generalizations about races ain't cool. It's not cool when people like cknykid do it about Jews and it ain't cool when you do it about palestinians. As for Native Americans, people were condemning the likes of Sitting Bull and Geronimo for being terrorists back in their day. But the whol Native thing is a digresson anyway. Terrorism is the last weapon of the desperate and the alienated. Israel has been repeatedly censured for its continued occupation of the OT. (That's illegal occupation, BTW) Israel could end most terrorism against it with a stroke of a pen: by withdrawing from the OT, dismantling the settlements and by assisting in the development of a cohesive civil society in Palestine. Contrary to the rabid propaganda you mighht devour, Israel's back is not against the wall, nor is its survival at stake (at least in the literal sense of the word). Israel is killing Palestinians of all stripes at a rate that Hamas and their ilk could only dream about. The ball is in israel's court, yet they choose to continue their aggressive, expansionist policies, all wrapped up under the guise of "the war on terror". And you suckers buy it hook, line and sinker.

I'd like to see how you'd manage if I stole your land, slaughtered your people, forced the survivors to live in tiny, impoverished reservations for generations. Somehow cheap gas and smokes doesn't seem like adequate compensation for basic human dignity. Uh...what? Okay let me wade through the garbled syntax and try to find the meat. I don't have time to do any leg work on the populationmak eup of pre-1948 palestinian Mandate, but I will get to it.. And the y took it from the Hashemites and so forth. Big deal. Go sell the PA some RPGs then we can talk.

The attack on Anita Hill. Troopergate. (read David Brock's "Blinded by the right" for more) Monicagate. The ongoing McArthyist attacks on academia by likes of David Horowitz and Lynne Cheney. And so on.

From on eextreme to the other.... Yeah, except for the wars (like 1967) which Israel starts. Plus, when was the last Arab-israeli war? All the more reason to kick them around, then? What are you getting at? (Oh yeah: denial of the identity of the Palestinian people may make the ethinc cleansing go down easy for the likes of you, but that doesn't make it right.) Yeah because one Arab is good as another to you, eh? You apologists for terror turn my stomach. Uh huh. cknykid, I'll not give you much of my time as you're not worth it and probably won't be around here much longer, but your rancid crap about "Jews taking over the world" is classic racist nonsense. You have no understanding of the many permutations of Zionist thought. This debate is divisive enough without you poisonming it with your racist diatribes. Keep it up and it'll be my pleassure to recomend you get tossed.