Higgly

I'd like to see Obama as Prez and Oprah as VP. I think Oprah would bring a lot of dignity and credibility to the position of VP after the Bush/Cheney abomination has sullied it beyond recognition. I was pretty disturbed when Huckabee won Iowa for the Republicans. Haven't we had enough of these religious jackasses yet? Christian, Jewish, Moslem What difference does it make? These people are idiots. Clinton is too New York and too beholden to the old process that has been compromised for too long by big money backroom politics. Clinton will never solve the Middle East problem, and the Middle East problem is the key to peace in our part of the world. It is just about time that a Black team, after all they have given to America, gets a chance to call the shots.

Talk to a European about what a car means and look at the size of the average European car compared to ours. Not too many SUVs over there. Here everybody thinks that they need a car. Over there, mostly people who really need a car think they need a car. It's no accident that they have a magnificent public transport system. Too bad we don't.

Yes but it's the biggest 8% with the most resources. We have what you need. Come to papa.

I don't get it. Why is this an issue? We have it all here. Resources. Land. Water. We have people from all over the world: East Asians, Africans, Europeans, Latinos, South Asians, West Indians, Southeast Asians... We have it all. It's a candy shop. Why just eat gumdrops?

Good heavens. I am wounded mortally. Kyoto was not about global co-operation to solve a global problem. No, indeedy. It was about Liberalism. O wait it was about punishing the rich. O wait. Who produces most of the pollution? O my. O my indeed. What is really sad about this is that the wealthy nations are best positioned to lead the way out of this mess and profit from it. Instead we have a a guy who invaded another country telling us the oil revenues would cover the costs (yeah right). The further you dig, the worse it smells. Finally you hit the main artery and a bullshit gusher darkens the sky. Dinosaurs start to die. Just don't be standing beside one when it happens. Nothing worse than being killed by a flop. Oh Steve can you lead? Apparently not.

When he can't find enough laying on the ground.

Yep. My Gawd. I am am agreeing with somebody from Forest Hill

So true. Would it be any better if we raised them in pens and ran them through slaughterhouses? Had a good dish of veal scallopini lately? I never liked McCartney myself. Without Lennon, Harrison and Ringo he was just another member of the Monkees.

So many women. So little time. Pass the chitlins and rice, baby. Just don't ask me to pull it out for a Tory

A weaker minority government than we have now. The Republicans out in the US. Russia rising. Pakistan in chaos and sealed off. China resplendent and moving to dominate Africa - the world's last great unclaimed prize. Iraq still occupied and dragging the US dollar down. Iran growing stronger through partnerships with Russia and China. Israel stealing more land. More fundamentalist bullshit of all kinds: Christian/Jewish/Moslem. India going into recession. Conrad Black in jail. Barbra Amiel whining for dollars. More Canadians dying in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai made CEO of Disneyland.

If Bush changes his position now he is only hobbling his successor and/or trying to cultivate votes for his party's next candidate. This is a guy who has absolutely no credibility anymore on any issue. I doubt it matters what he says about anything. My guess is that once Bush is gone, he is going to be buried so deeply in the American subconscious you are going to need a proctologist to find him.

Cross-posting is not allowed on most fora I frequent. The purpose of the policy is to enforce a sort of de facto copyright that cannot be enforced otherwise. You came here to post your arguments because you feel this is a forum that matters. It will matter less if you shop it around to a lot of other places. If you want to syndicate your ideas, maybe you should start your own web site.

I think Dyer is pretty good. He has the handicap of always seeming to report from somewhere else (usually London), but, hey. the guy was banned from the Jerusalem Post by Barbara Amiel so at least you know he's got balls and speaks a truth somebody doesn't want to hear. One of his best things was the invention of the "Politique du pire" concept (with relation to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict). "Politique du pire" is a strategy where you continuously goad the other party until they finally commit some outrageous act that can be reported in a newspaper of record as a big bad thing. I thought it described what is going on in Israel/Palestine perfectly.

Sad to say but we seem to get this from the British. As Paul Theroux said of the British: "They apologize when you bump into them, and they say we're weird?

I give. Who did kill bin Laden? My computer is Adobe Flash challenged for some reason I've never been able to figure out. It doesn't work. I've tried to install it, uninstall it, re-install it, de-install it. I tried to get some form of support from Adobe (good luck with that). Please don't offer suggestions. I've given up and besides at least I don't have to watch the stupid flash-based ads so many sites have.

Yeah right. And the righties were all howling that Saddam was planting bombs on airliners. I was on a 747 on the eve of the ground war flying between Canada and Europe and the whole bloody plane was empty. Literally. I think there were maybe 20 passengers on the whole plane. Damn near destroyed the western airline industry. My point in starting this thread was about how it is that our government and the western press has a very bad habit of focussing on the evil du jour and ignoring the 900 pound gorilla - the huge international arms trade into which many western companies constantly funnel weapons indiscriminately. The idea that we should all just focus on Iran is ludicrous. As far as I'm concerned, we are being played by the same idiots who turned the silly ravings of Mad George into a completely unnecessary war that will not end in our lifetime.

No we have "Christians" with massive military capability who invade foreign countries on fabricated grounds.

I'd give Stewart and Marchi some chops, and at least Dion had the brains to understand that the problem neeeded a global solution. The others were not in the seat when the issue became one of critical importance. These were all people who served when a lot of people were calling Suzuki a kook. Baird's passion is for Harper, and not for the problem.

Well I don't know. How about those German and Italian union agreements? Wasn't communism invented by a Jew? As for the Ukrainians, weren't socialism and medicare brought to us by a Saksatchewan politician? How you can say the Chinese are not left-leaning is beyond me, given the fact that they finally escaped Imperial rule only by force of a communist leader (admittedly an idiot) whom they supported big time. Yes, it is dangerous to say that any given people are of a particular bent. But they all came here as persecuted minorities, typically the source of left-leaning voter movements.

Finally an answer. I was amazed at the extent to which this thread evolved into an attack on David Suzuki, a guy who stood up for the environment when nobody else would and ended up being labelled a kook for his troubles. And now we all see that he was right all of those years. The truth is that we have a lot of politicians who are lawyers and damned few who know anything else. Baird is a guy who keeps popping up when the government needs someone with an ass made of asbestos. Sort of like Jim Flaherty. Not surprisingly they both came out of the Mike Harris government. Baird has no qualifications to be a minister of the environment. None. Diddly. Not even a specialty in environmental law. The guy is like one of those lapdogs who growls and snarls whenever the doorbell rings. And his eyes are too close together.

Well guess what, we have our own sacred cows. This is the bloody problem! We think our scared cows are the only ones that matter! Do not look at South Asia, nor any other part of the world, through western eyes, including the eyes supplied to us by the western media.

Yes it is and that is because the state is so friggin powerful! It should be a hard standard to meet.

On the other hand, if you look at the history of immigration from Europe, you'll see that much of it has derived from the persecuted classes: Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses... Isn't that how it goes? The Quakers, the Irish, the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, the Chinese... Is it any wonder that they might favour left-leaning policies once they get here?

Most political commentators on Pakistan say that religious extremists are not a major force in Pakistani politics. The upcoming election was seen more as a power struggle between the Military and the Security Services (secret police) and Bhutto. Now that she's gone, and with Sharif still out of the picture, guess who gets to stay in power? Bhutto's people are saying that they got no protection or support from the Pakistani security services. The Times of India? might be a little biased, but they are closer to the scene than most of the news sources we have over here.