Higgly

After the drubbing he took in the by-elections, he is not looking good. I think he is also hobbled by being a member of Chretien's cabinet. Would be the same thing if a member of Mike Harris' cabinet were running for Premier of Ontario. Not a chance.

Apparently the Chinese are coming around. I just saw a BBC interview with Gambari, the UN's special envoy to Burma and he said that the Chinese were instrumental in getting him face time with Aung San Suu Kyi. Could be the Burmese generals are on shakey ground. The Chinese are trying to put on their good face for the Olympics and this could be more attention than they want to see right now. However, the crackdown continues with raids on homes and monasteries after the curfew (when there will be no witnesses). Who do these guys think they're fooling? I continue to be very disappointed with the timid face that ASEAN is showing. Very poor performance, especially by Singapore.

Separation of church and state. What a concept! I agree about the unfairness of funding Catholic schools, though. It has to stop.

Swarthy folks. I love it. I'll put my experience with other races up against yours any day. You focus on negatives and you ignore the tremendous numbers - at least as large as us "white folks" - of perfectly law-abiding members of the "swarthy folk" who outnumber the "bad swarthy folk" you constantly go on about, ScottSA. Try focussing constantly on the misdeeds of "non-swarthy folks". What a pretty picture you would come up with. And yes, I do refer to Harper as Steve and I do it because I want to communicate the extraordinary extent to which he has aligned himself with the Bush administration. I expect that his most recent attack on marijuana is another thread in that skein. Steve's constant snuggling up to "W" on all issues of importance - the environment, the war on drugs, border issues, is very troubling. Almost as troubling as his repeated attacks on the judiciary, and even here he looks like "W". Were it not for the judiciary in this country, we would be completely at the mercy of guys like Steve and he is working has hard as his little brain will let him to hobble it. This is the big issue I personally have with Steve and why I will refer to him with as much disdain as the rules will allow. This country has seen constitutional greats and consitutional midgets. You can guess into which category I put Steve.

Too bad this is in danger of slipping into another thread about the Middle East, but Palestinians not indigenous to Palestine? Come on, JBG. This is a thread about Burma. Let's try to keep it that way.

To those of you who wondered how Steve might ram through legislation with a minority government... The point is that he is counting on the opposition to be more afraid of an election than voting in favour of his legislation.

Steve now says that every motion introduced by the government will now be a motion of confidence and that the defeat of any government motion (including minor motions such as amendments) will be trated as a vote of non-confidence. Clearly Harper thinks he has nothing to fear from Dion even hough most polls show the parties neck and neck. Harper has now announced his war on drugs legislation. For those of you who didn't know, marijuana is a narcotic (snicker). In any case, he is apparently going to try to bully through a lot of legislation that the opposition, and even many Canadians, might find troubling. Repeated polls have shown that a majority of Canadians feel marijuana is a red herring and the real problems are drugs like cocaine and heroin. We will see if the opposition parties are able to stop Harper from ramming through legislation that they object to and that might be, well, perhaps un-Canadian.

I still have a message I sent Greg last November sitting in my outbox.

I'm not a big fan of his. Certainly he gets credit for being sympathetic to politicians in this one interview but he makes his living making fools of them, so I'm thinking this looks pretty hypocritical. One thing that turned me against him very early on was his "talking to Americans" bit. I'm sure there are many topics one could bring up with Mr. Mercer that would leave him looking dumb in front of a knowledgable audience. Mercer is a ridicule comedian. This is the easy stuff. The comedians who can make us laugh about the human condition are a lot funnier to me and I think this is harder to do. Say a show like "Corner Gas", as opposed to Mercer's show.

So if I understand the rules correctly then, I cannot call someone a racist, but I can say that I think an opinion he expresses is racist? Just want to be clear. Moxie, I think of myself as a left-leaner and I have been called a racist. Right-leaners seem to get away with a lot more than left-leaners. I am thinking here of a particular right-leaner whom I have reported a number of times for name-calling, and whose posts have been removed, but who is still here playing the role of repeat offender.

As far as I can tell, the topic is your demented paranoia about Moslems.

Me too, and I think you are deranged

OK. You seem to be fixated on Moslems. How many people in the west have been killed by Moslems? How many people in the Middle East have been killed by Christians?

Did they tell you to turn in your gun? Woops. Rifle?

No, us peasants would not be able to expect the same. Can you name a single country in the world where an ex-leader like Chretien would not be able to marshall the same resources? In a utopian world, we would all be in the same line-up. The only country where I have ever seen a news item that said a former leader had to wait in line for health resources was Israel. I think it was Shamir trying to get into a nursing home. I hate Shamir and I thought "Good for you, you prick.", but I had to give the Israelis cedit. I confess I had to wonder why CNN was carrying the story though.

CityTV just announced similar results from a Crop-Decima poll. This is getting interesting.

Yikes.

Yeah, that's just great. But what the hell has he got local candidates for? This is a guy who keeps telling us "Leadership counts" and this tells me he can't delegate. The Liberals broke promises? Hell, Tory broke one before he even got elected. Now there's a record. Dancer has it right. A former cable exec with a blond streak a mile wide. When he worked for Rogers he could turn on a dime and everybody had to just gulp and say, "Yahs boss." This ain't the same thing. Not the same thing at all.

I love it!

No. What would you do? Invade Burma? Then the Chinese come in with a counter-force. There have been calls for a boycott of the Chinese Olympics. Now that could make things interesting. Especially if somebody like George Bush were to back it. Might actually save his bacon, image-wise. Maybe there are threats of this being made along diplomatic channels. Some sort of action against ASEAN might be useful. Some of the ASEAN countries have been wagging their fingers at Burma - the Philippines, for example. A little pressure on Singapore might go a long way. They are very, very influential - not only in South-East Asia, but also on China. Deng Xiao Peng once opined that he could foresee China developing as Singapore has. Singapore is the mouse that roared in East Asia. A lot of credit to them and to Lee Kuan Yew, but they need to put their money where their mouth is on democracy. Talk to a Singaporean about action on Burma, and they wil say that they are worried that it might piss off China and "de-stabilize the region". Singapore, being a very small state, is always worried about stability in the region. I seriously doubt that any of Burma's supporters are going to want to bet the farm on Burma and the Junta. My take on the China/Burma connection is that it is a strategic client state. There is not a lot of other value there - maybe some good rubies and emeralds, and cheap labour. I think it might be just the right pressure point for the west to prove that it means what it says when it talks about freedom and democracy. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but that's my take. And no JBG, I was not being sarcastic.

John Tory now says that he is no longer backing faith-based schools. The first politican to break a promise before he got elected!

The NWT is having an election. There are 19 ridings and 19 seats up for election. There are no political parties. At the assembly, all 19 reps sit in a circle and elect a speaker. They also decide who the premier should be. Is this a better system than the system we have in the rest of the country with political parties? I think it's worth thinking about. What do you think?

I think we are in agreement. I agree with your thoughts about the Israeli government, and I think that this is especially applicable whenever people like Sharon and Netenyahu have ben involved.

You missed the part where Amnapour showed an American orthodox Jewish woman in a cunning little hat showing a group of Christian fundamentalists around the West Bank and saying "How can they say we are occupiers? It is ours!" If you were a Palestinian Arab holding a deed to the land this woman was driving over, would you consider her a radical? I sure as hell would, and I would see nothing about her as being in favour of peace and tolerance.

This whole thing reminds me of the East Germany/West Germany thing. One day the wall came down and... look out! There is not a lot we can do about this. Maybe it would be a better idea to look into what we might do to bring the Mexican economy into the fold. Why not try to be inclusive instead of exclusive for a change?