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I know that the Globe story mentioned that in passing, but I don't think it's correct. The PM has no formal role in individual immigration or citizenship cases, and if he intervened in something like that it would be pretty peculiar to say the least. We have a complete federal department to process Lord Crossbudget's applications if they come, and existing rules to apply. Lord Crossbudget. I love it. Formal or informal, you can be sure this one will go to the top. I am waiting to see if those for whom Lord Black fought are going to fight for him. O Barbara....

Yes they do charge interest. Good point. Would be interesting to hear a panel of Mullahs weigh in on this. Nobody seems to have issued a Fatwah yet. Maybe like Catholics and birth control? Here's a Link

I couldn't get it to work either. Can someone provide a synopsis?

Good point. We told him, 'Georgie don't go!' Or rather might I dare say, our Liberal government told him....

Muhammad Yunus and the bank he founded in Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank, have won the Nobel prize! This is a bank which made micro-loans to the poorest of the poor. A loan of $US 20 would not be out of the ordinary for the Grameen, which routinely lent money to start small businesses, improve village life, pay for educations, and generally improve the lot of Bangladeshis. The Grameen trusted the its clients to be good for their word and it has reaped great rewards for Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank is essentially bootstrapping one of the poorest economies in the world. The international aid community has been buzzing about the Grameen for over 10 years, and finally it has been given its due. This is a great day for the world. You can google the world Grameen and fill yourself in. Muhammad Yunus is a Moslem.

What Weinreb ignores is that Israel is constantly in the news, while Myanmar rarely ripples a headline. This draws people's attention to Israel; they will form opinions about and make comments on things that have their attention. I would be hard pressed to find a day in the past 10 years when Israel was not in the headlines. I bet if you did a word frequency count of the Globe and Mail over the past 10 years, you would find the word Israel more than you would find the word Saskatchewan. This is just intellectual bafflegab to try to repress comment on Israel.

Nice loadup with code words and code names. Thanks. Do you deny it is true? In that case, I'd prefer neutrality on Israel. Under Rabin, I would have been willing to go pro, but since then Netanyahu, Sharon, Olmert.... No thanks.

I agree avatars make posters easier to spot. You can limit bandwidth cost by keeping avatar size down - say 80 pixels square at a max, which is fairly standard. I wouldn't want to see what some forums do where the avatar size is either not controlled, or allows a maximum size that is too large - it makes the forum jerky to view unless you have a super graphics card and gobbles up site disk space. That having been said, I wouldn't say it should be a priority - I think the site Admin has more important things on his plate.

Bingo

There ya' go. It's time to give the Marijuana Party a chance. What we need here is a Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Conrad Blank is swimming like mad for the shores of Canada. Last night he gave a speech at the Empire Club in Toronto waxing enthusiastic about Canada being one of the top 10 countries in the world, trashing the UN, eschewing our traditonal role as peacekeepers, and generally giving his approval to all of Steven Harper's current talking points. Can it only be a coincidence that Mr. Harper is the guy who will decide Lord Black's application for renewal of his citizenship? Could it be Lord Black would rather serve time in a Canadian jail or use the Canadian justice system to his legal advatange? In any case, he would like us all to know that his renunciation of Canadian citizenship a few years back was only an 'act of protest' Peter C. Newman, chronicler of Canadian top-dogdom, was quoted as saying that he views this as part of Lord Black's application to get his passport back. Globe and Mail article

If you are 'pro' or 'anti', aren't you then letting another government decide your foreign policy in all matters that relate to that country? I would rather have a government that takes things one issue at a time and examines each of them on a case by case basis and in light of changing exigencies on the ground. George Bush is pro-Israel and he bought into an Iraq policy that was essentially drafted for Benjamin Netanyahu by Paul Wolfowitz.

Rae might have a few pithy words. His wife and kids are Jewish.

Interesting analysis. Thanks for the post.

Numbers like this published in journals like The Lancet are serious business. This is a big nail in the Bush coffin.

There is an interesting thread elsewhere on the conversion of Bell Canada to a trust. There is some relevance here. Trusts were originally encouraged by the government to give Alberta oil and gas companies a boost up. I would say that was a pretty generous gift, and look at the benefits. There is a line from a John Fowles novel (I think it was 'Daniel Martin') where he describes the people who live in a little fishing village on the coast of England and go to bed every night comforted by "...a smug self-assurance that everyone out there is exactly like we are right here." A lot of the people who are objecting to this seem to be doing it on similar grounds. I don't have it. I don't need it. Why should they have it? Whoever it was who mentioned the daily flights from St. John's to Fort McMoney needs to remember that the workers get on the flights - the family stays behind. Not everyone can pick up and move to Alberta.

Bell expand? There are a lot of shareholders who are wondering when that is going to happen. My guess is that if they want to start a new growth adventure, they'll spawn a different company and sell shares. The dividend on this puppy is going ot be about 7%. A good stable company so looks pretty good to me. As for the tax issue, the theory is that taxes will accrue to the shareholder rather than the company but a lot of those shareholders are going to be holding the stock in RRSPs, and others will have it in RIFs (retired people tend to live near the lower end of the income scale with a lower tax rate). This definitely will have an impact on government revenues, but it will be some time before anybody is going to be able to figure out what that is, I think.

There is no doubt Ignatieff screwed up. Decisions about what is and what is not a war crime should be made by authoritative investigative bodies, not political candidates. This having been said, Kadis was his campaign co-chair. Her resignation over a foreign affairs matter which does not directly effect Canada is curious. If she had done so over a major divisive domestic issue, that would be one thing. But over a remark made about a foreign country engaged in a war with another foreign country? She is welcome to whatever priorities she chooses, but the one she has chosen makes me wonder whether she was the right person for the job in the first place. Personally, I am not losing any sleep over Ignatieff's candidacy, since I don't see him as a good choice for PM for a number of reasons: he has little parliamentary experience, has spent a major (50%) portion of his life living outside the country, and he has little to no management experience of any kind. I also think he has made himself look too much like Harper with his support for the Iraq war (another change in direction). I see this screw-up coming out of a scramble to back away from that. Given a choice between Harper and a Harper look-a-like, the voters are going go for the real thing.

Rue that is a generous and honest admission. A Rabin to my Hussein.

Global warming has been widely accepted by the scientific community as fact. The only junk science is coming out of Washington and has been sponsored by all the usual suspects. The Inuit are talking about real changes in the ice cap and major problems finding their traditional sources of food. The size of the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer is larger than ever. This is a big problem and it is getting bigger all the time.

You make it sound like it is all going to Labrador! How do you know they are all only occasionally employed? If it belongs to all Canadians then why can't those who live in Labrador expect some part of it? They pay taxes the same as you do. They may not pay as much as you do, but then I'd say if you live in a major city, you are getting a lot more back than they are.

Harris is the guy who cut the Ministry of the Environment budget to the point that it was no longer able to monitor the water supply. The trail of e. coli leads right to his office.

Following the recent trend to pick media types, I'm sure Rex Murphy would love the job. It would be fun to watch him sitting on the throne biting his tongue. He would certainly be a force to be reckoned with.

Oh no! He's calling us 'you people'! We will have to agree to disagree. The extraordinary amount of money that gets shovelled into major population centres, corporate subsidies and tax breaks, museums, employment centres, what have you. Such a small amount of money and from a government running a massive surplus. Pathetic.

Judging by this thread, maybe Betsy's idea for a miscellaneous forum was a good idea.