Higgly

I see this morning that Flaherty seems to be backing away from the idea of general tax splitting. I guess he read my post .

Unless the government is willing to accept less revenue, those who do not qualify will pay for those who do. That's not selfishness, just self-preservation. This sets up a discriminatory tax regime in the interests of social engineering. A tax reduction that can benefit everyone would be a more even-handed approach IMHO.

Rue, which comes first, the Israeli helicopter gunship attack or the Palestinian rocket reprisal? Can you say for sure? I sure can't. All I know is that Israel never stops the killing, even when there is a lull in the firing of rockets by the Palestinians. Israel has been constantly dealing in death and destruction. Looking back to the numerous cease-fires during the second intifada, it was the same thing. A cease fire would be declared. There would be a cessation in the suicide bombs, and then Israel would start killing again. She was in Israel today saying Israel had a responsibility to protect its citizens, or did you miss that? Rue if you think the National Post is anti-Israel, you have not been paying attention. Care to give some examples? I don't agree with you, but perhaps if it is true, you might perhaps consider CNN and Fox 'News' to be a hefty counterweight.

Single parents will lose. Widowed seniors will lose. Single people will lose. Double income families may see a small benefit. The wealthy who can afford to have one spouse stay home to look after the kids and the house will be the major winners. The Tory's just appear to be looking after their own. Lowering the tax rate would be much better for everyone, IMHO. This, like the posturing in Hanoi, appears to be mainly electioneering.

At last, an original thinker! Where are you going to put the politicians? Or is that covered with the lawyers?

The most credible journalist when it comes to Lebanon is Robert Fisk who lives in Beirut and has covered it since the days of the civil war and the first Israeli invasion. He's not yet clearly pointing fingers at anybody. Here's what he has to say.

Israeli peace organization 'Peace Now' has discovered that, contrary to official Israeli statements, Palestinians are the rightful owners of much of the land upon which Israeli settlements have been built. This includes Male Adumim, the major Israeli population centre east of Jerusalem which is estimated to be on land over 80% owned by Palestinians. Male Adumim is one of the settlements George Bush said the Israelis should be able to keep under any peace agreement. Palestinians 'own 40%' of Israeli West Bank settlements

And hence the title I used for the thread. Again, Brits will be protected and we will not. Thanks for the erudite review.

Are you saying we shouldn't? This is just sophistry. It's not the having, it's the using. O here it is. She's an anti-semite! Of course that explains it all. Israel's apologists have used this so much that it has lost meaning and become the modern day equivalent of crying wolf. Louise Arbour has considerable credibility, is very experienced in the area of war crimes and knowledgable in the field of international law. She went into Gaza and immediately announced publicly that she was seeing 'massive human rights violations'. People like this do not make public pronouncements like that unless they are sure of themselves. It's about time we had an opinion other than from the likes of Condoleeza Rice about what is going on over there. The next step has got to be charges against Israel in the World Court.

Well it's grand to see this thread coming back to its roots after having taken the scenic route through the usual specious and irrelevant axe grinding related to the pet issues of all the usual suspects. For my money, the main purpose of Harper's discussions with Hu should have been the fate of Huseyin Celil. This is deja Arar all over again. Instead of quietly pushing this very important issue at the very highest level (and how often do those opportunities come?), Mr. Harper chose to grand-stand and ended up with a 'walk-past' while the coffee was being served. The world neeeds to be made to understand that the lives of Canadian citizens are not to be trifled with. Instead we have the same ham-fisted bungling that we got with the Liberals regarding Maher Arar. Abroad and in trouble? Who are you gonna call? Certainly not the half-wits in Ottawa. Better off carrying a wad of yankee dollahs to pay bribes. Standing up in front of the press and shouting about Human Rights prior to meeting with the leader of China is just not very smart. First Kyoto, then the Income Trust debacle, and now this. Mr. Harper can't seem to stop from skating off-side.

Rue. How many Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets? How many Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli response to those rockets? Louise Arbour is not as dumb as George Bush, Rue. As for the Chinese issue. Most Canadians agree that human rights is a problem in China. They disagree with the way Harper went about it. There have been a number of television programs and newspaper articles highlighting these issues - organ harvesting programs, Tibet, the use of prison slave labour. Maybe you are just not as sensitive to this as you are about Israel. You might also want to consider the role of the press in this. Take the National Post, for example. Is there a day that goes by when Israel is not on the front page of the National Post (and many other newspapers for that fact)? When you wave something around in front of everybody's noses for that long (we're talking decades here) then guess what? That's what they tend to talk about.

a return to the 1967 borders with Israel giving up its illegal land settlements. These settlements to be left intact to house Palestinains as compensation for their years of suffering and hardship guarantees of non-violence from both sides a solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees Israel to lift its embargoes of Palestinian trade and commerce recognition by all Palestinians of the state of Israel A fair and enforceable agreement for the sharing of local resources - especially, but not limited to, water the deal to be brokered by someone other than the Americans who are too ham-strung by forces within their own political system to be of any use and have so far been completely useless. I believe that if the Palestinians are offered a fair and decent deal, they will busy themselves with the task of building their own state. The closest we have come to that so far is Oslo, which had to be worked out without the Americans. That was ultimately scuppered by the Israelis, specifically Benjamin Netenyahu (the same guy who came up with the idea of invading Iraq), setting the stage for the 2nd intifada. Israel needs to recognize that it is not going to have peace as long as the Palestinian issue remains unresolved and that the resolution of this issue is key to taking the wind out of the sails of Islamic terrorism.

Rue, I note the name calling at the end of your post and I have reported it. This is in violation of the zero tolerance protocol now in effect. The fact is, Rue, there are many Palestinian refugees who held valid titles to their land and homes at the time they were driven out by Jewish forces in 1948. Those titles were written both by the Turks and by the British - in a number of cases by both. The British accepted Ottoman titles as valid in re-registering land in land transfers, as well as in cases where people came to them to have the land re-registered. Many Palestinian Arabs came from families who had worked the land for generations. It was specifically to invalidate these titles that Israel passed the abandonment laws of 1950 - note that this was about half the 3 year period you state the Ottomans were supposed to have used. The fact that Israel felt the need to pass these laws is in itself proof that Palestinian Arabs who had been driven from their land held valid titles that were an obstacle to Israel's plans and that Israel felt a need to use some form of bureaucratic hocus-pocus to deal with ther issue. This, by the way, is illegal under international law. Even those Palestinian Arabs who did not leave their homes and land were in danger of having their land taken from them by Israel's bureacratic thuggery. Many had their land taken by force to make way for settlements built to house Jewish immigrants. Many under the pretext that the land was needed for 'security' reasons, only to see the land used to build settlements. Often, such as in the Shelta land case, unscrupulous Israeli land developers simply re-registered the land in their own names in spite of the fact that Palestinian Arabs holding legal title were living on the land. While there was some buying of land by Zionists, this never totalled more than 10% of all the land in the Palestinian mandate. Finally Rue, you are right when you say that I do not read all of your posts. This is because in general I find that.... they tend to be excessively long-winded they tend to repeat the same point over and over - often more than once within the same post they are filled with contradictions they wander all over the place and rarely stick to the topic at hand I am looking forward to a moderator response to your violation of the zero tolerance protocol.

Which part of Russia is the European part?

Have you ever associated with Moslems socially, worked with some of them, had an intelligent conversation with some of them them? In short Betsy, does your personal experience derive from anything other than CNN, Fox News, or the Jewish Post?

Are you including Russia?

Here is my response: thanks guys. Great job. I mourn your losses and I congratulate you on your successes. Welcome home. But, isn't this really America's fight? What benefit have we seen from the blood we have spilled? They just want more and more. They want us to participate in their ridiculous missile defence plan. They want us to take their side on Kyoto. They want us to cave into their violations of NAFTA. They want us to show our passports at the border. They want more and more, and they do not keep their promises. I think we can use our troops in more productive ways. I think we can use them to patrol our huge sea territories and to protect our sovereignty in the Artic. I think we can use them for peace keeping. I think that if George Bush had not squandered his juice in Iraq, he could have solved his problem in Afghanistan, and every time I see a Canadian die there it just ticks me right off.

I rarely read links. I think it is up to posters to precis their arguments and provide links as backup. Otherwise we just have a lot of posts with links and no indication that the posters have absorbed the content. This is supposed to be a debate, not a food fight.

I think that land mass brings with it a responsibility in terms to the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle that should be calculated separately from calculations related to population. I feel we should accept that our huge land mass is a privilege and be ready to bear with it our share of responsibility.

Absolutely. Both of my parents smoked. They both told me they would beat me if they caught me smoking. They both hated it, but they were hooked. I never smoked myself until I went away from home to go to university. At parties, I took cigarettes that were being offered. Within a year I was smoking, just like mom and pop. Second hand smoke is addictive. It is disappointing that the fight has taken so long, but this is a cancer on our society. I feel badly for tobacco farmers, but what can I say? It is either us or them.

Your use of the word 'craphole' is just plain disgusting. The zero tolerance rules interdict any further statements I might have for you on this point, Argus. As much as it grieves me to agree with you, Argus, your point about water pollution is valid and needs to be brought into the Kyoto protocol in a more substantive way.

Why don't we use land mass instead of population? What per cent of the world's land mass do we occupy? Isn't that more realistic? We have a very, very priviliged position. With privilege comes responsibility. You want to understand the difference between land mass and population, then go to Bombay (India, by the way, has one third our land mass). Go to Churchgate Station and stand there at 9:00 AM. That is the difference between population and land mass. It is an experience you will not soon forget. My advice: stand near a wall.

O jeez. Here we go. The easy retort.

I'll bite... These pollute much less than oil and are close in efficiency. This helps us farmers out by creating a market for our excess grains. Grain costs a lot of money to grow and we need to cover our costs and make a living. If someone gives me a good price to make biofuels then they get it. I can't just give my grain away I'd go broke. If someone wants to pay me a good price to feed starving people than so be it. I am opposed to it though as this leads to dumping. What right do I have to flood the market of a 3rd world nation putting their small farmers out of business. It's better that we put it into our cars so that we put the market back into synch. and not screw over the guys from other places trying to make it, let the guys from the 3rd world feed the guys from the 3rd world. By the way if people are starving it is really inconsiderate of them to have so many kids, it's not my place to take care of them, if you can't take care of kids keep your legs shut as you do not have the right to bring a new person into a life of squalor. This is a very serious problem. You have summed it up in a nutshell. One of the pillars of our economy is the healthy farm. We have to be able to grow our own food. I shudder when I go to the supermaket and I see a label that says 'Product of California' or 'Product of Mexico'. Food is one of the cheapest things we have. Why is it so important to shave pennies on tomatoes? I think the Europeans have it right when they subsidize their food indistry, They know where they came from. Ethanol is not an efficient response to the fuel problem. It costs more in energy than it produces, but here we have a farmer telling us that it is his only out. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You go boy. The Oxygen/Carbon Dioxide cycle. The lungs of mother earth. The Symbiosis of the plant and animal kingdom. If we can just get that right, we may outlive the next ice age.