Higgly

So it's OK to fund terrorist groups that attack your enemy in a time of war? Say like the French resistance. The Irgun... Just trying to get the rules straight here...

What are you dense? What part of my response do you not understand? THIS DID NOT HAPPEN AND THEREFOR I CANNOT HAVE AN OPINION. Does that make everything more clear for you? I DO NOT HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT EVENTS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. If you were living in Gaza City or Ramallah, who would you say is living this nightmare?

Thanks very much for that time line. I am quoting the article below. Note who attacked who first.... "Establishment of Israel The State of Israel, the first Jewish state for nearly 2,000 years, was proclaimed at 1600 on 14 May 1948 in Tel Aviv. The declaration came into effect the following day as the last British troops withdrew. Palestinians remember 15 May as "al-Nakba", or the Catastrophe. The year had begun with Jewish and Arab armies each staging attacks on territory held by the other side. Jewish forces, backed by the Irgun and Lehi militant groups made more progress, seizing areas alloted to the Jewish state but also conquering substantial territories allocated for the Palestinian one. Irgun and Lehi massacred scores of inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem on 9 April. Word of the massacre spread terror among Palestinians and hundreds of thousands fled to Lebanon, Egypt and the area now known as the West Bank. The Jewish armies were victorious in the Negev, Galilee, West Jerusalem and much of the coastal plain. The day after the state of Israel was declared five Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq immediately invaded Israel but were repulsed, and the Israeli army crushed pockets of resistance. Armistices established Israel's borders on the frontier of most of the earlier British Mandate Palestine. Egypt kept the Gaza Strip while Jordan annexed the area around East Jerusalem and the land now known as the West Bank. These territories made up about 25% of the total area of British Mandate Palestine. "

Thanks for acknowledging that it had no right to do so.

Like what? You play this game a lot. What exactly are you talking about.

Good lord. I didn't think there would be any Ontario member of MLW who would not vote in this election. How can you participate in this forum and then admit that you did not vote in an election?

So who gave Israel the right to decide who does and who does not have nuclear energy? Israel pulls stunts like this and then wonders why it has so much trouble with the Arab states.

Yah, and it all ground to a halt back in the 1800s. How bloody old are you to be still ticked about that? How different is this than the British empire? Freedom speaks Danish, Swedish, German, French, Walloon, Dutch.....

The slaughter would have been much much worse were it not for Gandhi. As for the Brits, was the problem that they carved the land up, or that they left immediately afterwards leaving the whole mess to be resolved by bloody conflict?

You talk about this as though it were some open free market transaction. You are talking about severely distressed sellers - distressed because of the extraordinarily vicious contraints put upon all aspects of their sociaety by the Israeli occupation - who are selling to a buyer who will never put the land on the open market again. It is illegal for an Israeli to seell land to a Palestinian. You are also talking as though all of the land was purchased legally. Most of it was seized illegally by administrative hocus-pocus followed up by military action. Your claims are smoke and mirrors. Earth to DogOnPorch. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. The three blind mice. As for your quote from the Koran, read the bible. You'll find things equally idiotic. Join a christian funcadmentalist group, you'll find idiots hell bent for leather to make those idiocies reality.

There is a piece in the Toronto Star today (Saturday, Oct 13, page A19) about a British Judge who has ruled that 9 of the startling "truths" in Al Gore's movie are in fact incorrect or not proven... 1) The sea level will rise 6.1 meters as a result of melting ice 2) People from low-lying islands in the South Pacific have had to migrate to New Zealand 3) Global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream 4) Gore's graphs on carbon dioxide and temperature do not prove his point 5) The disappearance of the snow on Mount Kilimanjaro is due to global warming 6) THe drying of Lake Chad is the result of global warming 7) Katrina was the result of global warming 8) Polar bears are drowning beause of the melting ice cap 9) coral reefs are bleaching worldwide because of global warming There is another article in the same edition ruminating on whether the Nobel prize might mean an easy ride to the White House for Gore

Oh to be sure. The "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" were terrible times for the Chinese. It it still not a very good place, but it is changing...

I disagree. Public racist statements are a crime in Canada. If you have accusations of racism they should be taken to the moderators. This is a label that is all too often abused.

Singapore is not the kind of democracy we are used to. In fact, it is more like the old style democracy that Mexico enjoyed under the PRE. The Peoples' Action Party (PAP) - founded by Lee Kuan Yew - has held power for a very long time. Ever Since Singapore declared independence. The PAP regularly engages in what I suppose you might call "soft repression". They use smear tactics to destroy their opponents. The people of Singapore ryely joke about "the PAP smear". Singapore is not an ideal democracy. However, that is not what my post was about. My post was about the influence of Lee Kuan Yew. He is widely considered an eminence grise and Singapore is looked upon in Asia as a pilot project. Especially by the Chinese. Note that the first sign of the tide turning against the dictators of Burma came from Mr. Lee. That was no accident. These guys stage manage everything. China under the emporers was more an idiocracy. No doubt I am being carried away by the moment, but I am watching the China Congress and waiting for the tea leaves the party will leave. Will they be patting themselves on the back for the good work they have done to make the Olympics happen or will they be talking about work that still must be done? These old farts are subtle, but they don't bullshit. They don't have to.

I haven't read all the posts in this thread , but I personally am against anybody keeping any sort of personal information about me, including my religious affiliation, without me knowing it so I can have a chance to ask the privacy commissioner to give me a ruling on the matter. And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

I think it is a mistake to try to put a use on information gathered about individuals and to use that to build an argument. Information has many, many uses. Information that is gathered into a system that has many access points can be used for many, many purposes by a very large number of people and agencies. It can have a brief shelf life for one agency and a permanent shelf life for another. It is always a mistake to assume that a nation over which you have no democratic control will place any value on your personal rights. The US has already made it very clear that it considers people who are not US citizens to not have any rights under US law. You cannot trust any foreign government to have your best interests at heart. We have a hard enough time making sure our own government does. Yes, the US claims that the information will have a short shelf life. But there is no guarantee of that in legislation that I am aware of, and there are no statements about what other agencies might have access to it during that period.

You quote Goering, that's what you get. Oh jeez. Now it's Churchill. I have a quote for you: "Speeches like Mr. Brown's make me sick." I will deal with your last question first. If dollar coins flew out of a pig's ass would you use them to buy the National Post? And now back to the real world. It doesn't matter what happens during a war. That is what the Geneva Conventions are all about. Germany, Italy and Japan did really nasty things during WWII. Do you see the allied countries occupying their land and building settlements? Enough said.

Link? I know I'd be the first one to give up brussels sprouts if the Queen told me to.

Louder than the cackling, hopefully.

No doubt Beaker knows all this. I am wondering what his thinking is behind the mask. Maybe he's got his eye on the UN. Many have wandered that path....

Thanks Hermann. The Geneva Conventions call for the respect of the exisgent land registry by the occupying power. If somebody were to conquer Canada, would you still think you had a right to house you paid the mortgage on? The US seems to think so because it made (through NATO) the Serbs give back the houses they had taken from the Moslems. Would you happily give up a house you owned because an invader had conquered your army?

Good grief. Where do you get this Sikh stuff? The Sardajees are a vey small demographic in Canada, and a small demographic in India. Immigrants vote Liberal because they offer the social safety net that Canada is known for around the world. There is tremendous risk in moving to a new country. Not only financial, but also social. Why do you think they all move into the same neighbourhoods? Go to any country and you will find a Canadian enclave for the same reasons. Try it some time.

LOL Dancer. Good one!

Steve has said he wants to move Canada towards an elected Senate. I think this is a great idea. The questions I have is "what is it that an elected senate is supposed to do? What power(s) should it have?" Right now, the senate has only the power to delay bills. There is some usefulness in this, I suppose, if an election is on the horizon. But it is passive-aggressive power, which is no more than the bureaucracy has. The question I have is this: what is it that an elected senate can contribute to Canada, and what has to change so that it can do so?

I agree. They are left with only Ignatieff and Dion, and neither one has any credibility. Ignatieff because he is a stranger to Canada, and Dion because he is tainted by Chretien. Steve is a great strategist, I have to give him that, but he is a lousy constitutionalist, and that is what I don't like. Wake me up when he is able to undertand the importance of the Supreme Court to the values we hold so dear.