Higgly

Just the fact that something as insignificant as the Blue Man Group has taken up this many pages of 'discussion' shows that America1 has hit the nail on the head. Reading this thread has been like trying to watch 'The View'.

Tory has announved that he will be running in Wynne's riding. Must be only coincidental that the riding has the second biggest police building in the city .

If he had the weapons, it would have been pretty hard to hide or move the facilities he used to construct them. Nothing like that has been found.

In 1947 the UN partitioned British Mandate Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas. In 1948 Israel declared itself a state. The US immediately recognized Israel, followed by the USSR. The surrounding Arab states attacked and the resulting conflict has come to be known in Israel as "The War of Independence". Palestinian Arabs refer to it as "The Naqba" or, "The Disaster". Since 1948 a number of myths have been promulgated by Israel and by its supporters. Many of these articles of 'mythinformation' (my word) form a core part of Israeli propoganda and are still being taught in Israeli schools and quoted by important members of the Canadian press. The Myths. 1) During the 1948 war, the objective of the Arabs was to destroy Israel and, although the Arab armies greatly outnumbered the Jewish fighters, Israel prevailed in a desperate and heroic David and Goliath struggle through pluck, determination and guile. 2) Immediately before and during the war, approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled Palestine because the Arab attackers told them to leave or be slaughtered. They became refugees living in the adjacent countries. 3) Following the war, Israel made every effort to negotiate a peace but the Arabs refused to talk and were completely intransigent. The Facts. 1) During the 1948 war, the objective of the Arabs was to destroy Israel and, although the Arab armies greatly outnumbered the Jewish fighters, Israel prevailed in a heroic and desperate David and Goliath struggle through pluck, determination and guile. History now shows that different Arab countries had different objectives. King Abdullah of Jordan, rather than wanting to destroy Israel, sought only to shore up his claim to the Arab parts of Palestine asssigned by the British as the Jordanian Protectorate - mostly the West Bank. Prior to the war he negotiated an agreement with Israeli emissary Golda Meir in which he agreed to respect Israel's borders as laid out in the UN partition agreement and he kept his word. Jordanian forces never attempted to cross the borders laid out in the partition resolution. Israel, on the other hand, attacked areas under Jordan's protectorate and tried to take land from Abdullah. At the end of the war, Israel held nearly twice as much land as had been granted it under the partition agreement, but was prevented from taking key strategic sites in the Jordanian Protectorate by an effective Jordanian defense. History also shows that Jewish fighters outnumbered the Arabs significantly throughout the war. At the start in May of 1948, there were 35,000 Jewish fighters against 25,000 Arab fighters. By the end of the year, Israel had 96,000 active fighters. Although the Arabs had increased their forces throughout, they never came close to matching the numerical strength of the Israeli forces. In addition, during this time. Israel was able to substantioally increase its armament by shipments from Czechoslovakia. 2) Palestinian Arabs fled their homes because the Arab attackers told them to leave or be slaughtered. This is an important assertion for Israel because it is often used to support a claim that it is the Arab countries who caused the Palestinian refugee crisis so Israel has no responsibility for mitigating the problem. Historical records show that the majority of Palestinian Arabs were deliberately expelled by Jewish fighters. Interviews with refugees from Jaffa and Haifa tell of being driven from their homes by mortar shelling and sniper fire coming from Jewish-held areas such as Tel Aviv. Israeli records tell of David Ben Gurion giving the command (with a sweep of his hand) to drive some 60,000 refugees from the towns of Ramle and Lydda. Other refugees fled because they had been terrorized as a result of slaughters carried out by Jewish forces in villages throughout Palestine. This ethnic cleansing was part of a master plan called plan D which called for the Hagganah (soon to be the IDF) to clear Arab towns and villages of potentially hostile arab residents. It was also in keeping with the original British proposal for the partition of Palestine which called for "transfer" of Arabs out of areas allocated to the Jews. It is recorded that Ben Gurion and the Zionists were originally opposed to the British proposal for partition, but changed their minds when they realized that it called for the expulsion of Arabs from Jewish lands. The Arabs were against partition because it called for them to give up lands they had lived on for centuries in favour of Europeans who for the most part had been there less than 20 years. While Arab commanders did in fact warn residents in areas where fighting was to take place, this is commonplace during armed conflicts and is in fact recognized as proper war protocol among civilized nations. Following the war, Israel closed its borders to the refugees, refusing to allow them to return. In 1950, Israel passed the abondonnment laws which stated that Arabs who left their homes for areas outside of Palestine, or for areas of Palestine occupied by forces hostile to Israel, had effectively abandannoned their claim to ownership of their properties. This has been used ever since to justify the seizure of Arab land throughout Palestine and to construct Israeli cities (known as settlements) for Jewish immigrants to live in. 3) Israel made every effort to negotiate a peace but the Arabs refused to talk and were completely intransigent. Taking the Arab countries one at a time... Jordan As mentioned above, King Abdullah of Jordan had agreed to respect Israel's borders and kept his word, although Israel did not do the same. Following the war he tried to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel which would have guaranteed, among other concessions, access to religious sites in Jerusalem as well as a cessation of all hostilities for a minimum period of 5 years. However Ben Gurion stubbornly refused to make any concessions in exchange for the advantages Israel sought. In the end no peace was reached because Ben Gurion ultimately decided that it was in Israel's best interests to deal with Egypt first and that peace agreements with the Arabs were not the highest priority. Ben Gurion's priorities for Israel consisted of the following.... 1) Building up infrastructure in the newly formed state of Israel 2) Relations with American Jewery 3) Peace with the Arabs The second is instructive. Throughout the period during which the state of Israel was created, with minor exceptions, the Zionists consistently aligned themselves with major world powers (first the British, then the French and finally the Americans) and eschewed direct discussion with local Arabs. Following the armistice, Israeli forces terrorized Jordanian Arab villages in a number of 'reprisal' raids. Throughout the post-war period, Israel constantly sought justifications to attack not only Jordan but the other Arab states as well. This was in keeping with its 'Iron Wall' strategy. The idea was that the only way to deal with the Arabs was by the application of brute military force. This strategy was first proposed by Palestinian Zionist Ze'ev Jobotinsky in the 1920s and formed a key part of Israel's approach to the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab world in general. There were a number of incidents during which Palestinian refugees tried to infiltrate back across the border to reclaim their homes or to attack Jewish settlers who were now living on their lands. Although the Jordanians, and in fact all of the Arab states around Israel, did their best to prevent such infiltration, Israel adopted a policy of collective punishment raids on Arab villages. Under the Geneva conventions, which Israel refuses to honour, collective punishment is forbidden. It also adopted a free-fire strategy. During the period between 1949 and 1956 some 5,000 infiltrators, mostly unarmed, were shot and killed. This is important considering that many of Israel's supporters are now claiming that the Palestinians deserve to lose their land because they have 'stayed away' for 50 years. One such case of a reprisal raid was an attack on the Jordanian Arab village of Qibya. A small group of infiltrators had crossed into Israel from Jordan near the village of Qibya and murdered a woman and two children. Although Jordan offered to find and prosecute the offenders, and advised that the they were most likely Palestinian Arab refugees and not residents of Qibya, an Israeli force commandered by Ariel Sharon was sent by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to conduct a collective punishment reprisal raid on the village. Sharon's forces came unexpectedly out of the night and subjected the village to heavy gunfire, trapping the residents in their homes. They then systematically blew up all the houses. Some 69 people were killed, two thirds of whom were women and children. There was an international outcry following the incident. These sort of extreme reprisal raids became Sharon's specialty; it is hard not to read descriptions of them without coming to the conclusion that he, and possibly Dayan, were psychopaths. In another incident, Dayan tried to justify a reprisal raid based on the fact that a flock of Israeli sheep had somehow found their way on the wrong side of the Jordanian border. There was never any evidence that the sheep were stolen, and may very well have simply wandered off while the shepherd slept. Untold numbers of lives were saved when the UN found the sheep and returned them unharmed. The Jews complained that one of the rams looked suspiciously tired. The UN jokingly referred to this as the 'Bo Peep Indicent'. Another insult to both Jordan and Syria, was an Israeli scheme proposed by Dayan to divert the waters of the Jordan River in order to provide water to irrigate the Negev Desert. The Jordan River is considered an international waterway and its diversion to serve one boundary state over the needs of others is strictly illegal under international law. Israel did it anyways. Again, it was Ben Gurion who approved the scheme over the objections of moderates in the government. The American government of Dwight Eisenhower protested to no avail. It is entirely plausible that Israel's strategy during this time was to provoke its Arabs neighbours and to use any response as a pretext to renew the war and to take more land. What it achieved was to greatly inflame Arab hatred for Israel. Lebanon Given recent events, Israeli behaviour towards Lebanon is instructive, and it is useful to view this in an historical context. Palestinian Zionists under Chaim Weitzmann did their best to have south Lebanon up to the Litani River included in the British Mandate for Palestine at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following the First World War. At this conference, Weitzmann was successful at having the Balfour declaration included in the Peace Settlement, formalizing not only the British Mandate but the Jewish claim on Palestine. Had Weitzmann succeded in his attempt to include South Lebanon, it is probable that Israel would now extend to the Litani River. However, the British and the French had already carved up the Middle East in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement which gave Lebanon to France; Weitzmann's efforts were futile. Following the 1948 war, Israeli cabinet documents show that Ben Gurion plotted constantly to overthrow the government of Lebanon. His plan was to destabilize the government and install a puppet Christian Maronite regime that would invite Israel to invade under some pretext. Israel would then occupy, and ultimately annex south Lebanon up to the Litani. Considering Israel's activities to divert the Jordan River, it is likely that the theft of water from the Litani was a key objective. In both 1978 and recently, Israel invaded Lebanon announcing that it was going to stop at the Litani. Lebanon, for its part, respected the armistice borders following the cessation of hostilities at the end of the 1948 war. Like most of the other Arab countries, Lebanon was poor and struggled to deal with the huge flood of Palestinian refugees created by Israel's actions during the war. When Israel complained that Palestinian Arab refugees were infiltrating back across the border and taking up possession of their homes and lands once again, Lebanon obligingly moved them north to South Beirut where they sat in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla for some 30 years until one day Ariel Sharon's IDF had more than 2,500 of them slaughtered after driving the PLO out of Lebanon. Most of the refugees slaughtered by Sharon were women, children, and elderly men. Syria Israeli mythinformation makes Syria out to be Israel's most implacable enemy. In fact, following the armistice, there was a year and a half of peace between the two nations. The first armed conflict came about when Israel unilaterally tried to change the border status quo. The armistice agreement laid out a DMZ between Israel and Syria that was to be monitored and policed by the UN and in which 'normal life' (as it was prior to the war) was to be resumed. While Syria respected the DMZ, Israel regarded it as part of its sovereign territory and began an aggressive program of building new settlements and introducing soldiers and policemen disguised as civilians. In one case, Israel forcefully moved several hundred Bedouins to Arab villages in north Israel when they refused to accept Israeli identity cards for the DMZ. Israel also began a series of projects, not the least of these was the diversion of the Jordan River, by carrying out construction work in the DMZ, and forcefully evacuating Arab villages to this end. Things came to a head when Israel sent a patrol of soldiers disguised as police into an area of the DMZ that was Syrian dominated. The Syrian army attacked the patrol, killing 7 soldiers and taking the remainder prisoner. Israel responded by having the Israeli Air Force bomb Syrian police posts and attack 3 Syrian villages in the DMZ. The result was an international outcry against Israel. There were also a number of serious incidents involving highly agressive behaviour on the part of Israel. In one such incident, 5 Israeli soldiers were caught inside the Syrian border trying to retrieve a telephone tapping device which had been planted by the IDF. In an unprecedented act of air piracy, The Israeli Air Force intercepted a Syrian passenger liner and forced it to the ground inside Israel. The passengers and crew were held hostage to force the release of the Israeli soldiers. And international outcry forced the Israelis to release the airliner. Another incident, called operation Kinneret, involved an unprovoked surprise attack on Syrian positions lead by Ariel Sharon. This attack resulted in the death of 50 Syrian soldiers an the capture of 30 more. The justification for the attack was that a Syrian soldier had fired on an Israeli patrol boat that had come too close to a section of the shore patrolled by Syria. The bullet had scraped some paint off of the bottom of the boat. What is also not widely known is that there were peace negotiations between the two. The talks broke down over water rights. Israel insisted on full and exclusive ownership of the Sea of Galilee, Lake Huleh and the stretch of the Jordan River that runs between them, maintaining that these waters were part of the land of Israel. Syria insisted that these were international waters, and legally, since the shores were part of the DMZ and not taken successfully by either party during the war, this was a legally tenable position. Syria tried to sweeten the pot by offering to absorb 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Israel refused. However talks did occur, there was a willing partner across the table from Israel, and claims that Syria refused to negotiate are not true. Given the constant military provocations which Israel inflicted on Syria, the latter deserves credit for sitting down at the table in an effort to reach a settlement. Egypt Following the 1948, King Farouk of Egypt refused to negotiate peace with Israel, but was soon deposed in an army coup (known as the 'Young Officers' Coup') lead by Gamel Abdel Nasser. Nasser's star was rising in the Arab world and there was talk that he might do for Arab nationalism what Attaturk had done for Turkey. Ben Gurion became paranoid that Nasser would be able to unite the Arab countries in a renewed attack on Israel. He began working in the background to provoke an incident with Egypt which would let him attack and deal the Egyptian army a crippling blow. Ben Gurion had decided that it was better to engage in such a pre-emptive attack before Egypt was able to recover its military strength. In spite of Ben Gurion's fears, Nasser began to open 'back'channel' communications with Israel through various embassies and their respective foreign ministers. The talks had evolved to the point where the issues of importance had been defined and steps had been made towards negotiating resolution on some of them. Like Jordan and Syria, Egypt was making honest efforts at discussions towards a peace settlement. One item of great concern to Ben Gurion was Egypt's relationship with Britain, which had seen the development of the Suez Canal. In an effort to destabilize the Nasser government and cast it in a bad light in the eyes of the British, Ben Gurion sent secret agents into Cairo to put bombs in mailboxes and movie theatres and terrorize the population. The agents were caught and confessed. While telling the Israeli people that the agents were innocent and had been framed, Ben Gurion pleaded with Nasser, through the back channels, to spare the lives of the agents. Nasser said that he would do what he could, but made no promises. In the lead up to the trial, one of the agents committed suicide in prison. Two of the remaining 7 were condemned to death and executed; the other five were imprisonned. Although Egypt had executed all of a group of Arab terrorists who had been caught under similar circumstances in the previous year, Ben Gurion raged that he had been betrayed and vowed revenge. Egypt had been the recipient of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees during the 1948, and put them into a huge refugee camp in Gaza. Although Egypt did what it could to prevent infiltration, refugees still managed to infiltrate across the border. In one incident, some infiltrators had stolen some papers and killed a bicyclist. In revenge, Israel sent Arial Sharon with an armed force to attack the Egyptian police post at Gaza. Fifty Egyptian soldiers were killed. This effectively killed the back channel negotiations with Egypt and Nasser came to view the Israelis as untrustworthy and malevolent. However these were minor incidents compared to what Israel did next. Nasser had alienated the French by providing support to FLN rebels fighting against the French in Algeria. Seeing an opportunity, Israel cozied up to France and was able to develop a very strong relationship based on the principle that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. As a result of this relationship, France sold Israel a number of Mirage Jets which guaranteed its military superiority over not only the Egyptians, but everyone else in the region as well. France also supplied Israel with a nuclear reactor which it was able to parley into a full nuclear program ultimately resulting in Israel's development of nuclear weapons. Israel has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation agreement so often used against any other state that tries to develop nuclear weapons. With the French relationship in its pocket, Israel was soon blessed with more opportunity when Nasser made the mistake of nationalizing the Suez canal, which antagonized the British. Israel, France and Britain plotted to attack Egypt and get rid of Nasser. The plan called for Israel to attack while the British and French provided military and other support. Although Ben Gurion was not too happy at having to do the dirty work, he did not hesitate to point out that oil had been discovered in the Sinai and that were the oil in Israel's hands, it would be happy to make deals with France for its refinement and sale. In a surpise attack, known to history as the Suez Crisis, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula and soundly defeated the Egyptian army, which retreated across the canal leaving behind large amounts of military equipment and armaments, which the IDF destroyed. Ben Gurion triumphantly declared the start of the Third Jewish Kingdom in the Knesset. The world was outraged, including both the US and the USSR. The USSR, who had just developed nuclear weapon capability, threatened to attack Israel with missiles. The US stayed ominously silent. Ben Gurion told the British and the French that he thought the Russians were bluffing and suggested that the value of the oil in the Sinai made the international outcry worthwhile. The astonished French ambassador responded "You are going to risk having your cities destroyed for a little oil?". They told Israel that they did not think the Russians were bluffing and advised that they were withdrawing their support. Israel was forced to retreat leaving the Sinai as it was prior to the invasion. Following this, Israel was almost completely alienated from the rest of the world. Sources... Tom Segev; One Palestine Complete; Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate; Metropolitan Books Avi Shlaim; The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; W.W. Norton & Company

Yeah right. That's why the opposition is the one who gets up and presents the budget every year. Argus you need to spend a few days in Walkerton where they can tell you what being a Tory is really all about.

I'm disappointed nobody has guessed who gave Israel its nukes .

My suggestion is to take away Israel's nukes. As long as Israel has nukes, the other countries in the region will want them too. By the way, here's a quick quiz: who was it that was responsible for giving nukes to Israel?

John Tory. The constant whining. It just never seems to stop.

Well I suppose it depends on what you call "real crime". What is that anyways?

Having lived and worked in Ottawa for a number of years I can only say that people who work for the government tend to know who pays their salaries. To say anything critical of the government is to risk your career.

Yes you are right. Seeking advice is prudent. But it is advice from guys who think like Kissinger that got them into this mess in the first place. I believe that China's real power will be economic rather than military. No argument there, but does the US really have any control in Iraq now outside of a few square miles inside Baghdad and some of the other cities? Everywhere else is pretty much chaos from what I have been able to tell. I think that the threat of Iran is being over-exaggerated, just like the threat of Saddam Hussein and Ho Chi Minh were over exaggerated. Same for the Dear Leader. This is a guy who refuses to fly anywhere - supposedly because he is afraid of flying, but more likely because he cannot field a decent squadron of fighters to protect him while he is in the air.

A former friend of mine (now departed and missed) lived in Bangkok for over 20 years, spoke Thai well, and was never able to figure out Thai politics. Although I have to admit I can't figure out how Ignatieff ended up in front of the Liberal leadership race. Remiel's comment about the King are true; he could probably bring the entire country into the streets with a few well-chosen words.

Oh jeez, here we go. The whole Axis of evil crap all over again. This is that whole slippery slope Bush and Cheney keep pushing about the war on terror having something to do with Iraq. The only reason Islamic insurgents are active in Iraq is because the US created the kind of power vacuum in which these guys flourish. The U.S. has as much chance of winning in Iraq as it did in Vietnam.

It is generally agreed that Cambodia was driven into the hands of the Khmer Rouge Communist insurgents by the extraordinarily violent bombing campaign waged against it by the US and by the behaviour of South Vietnamese troops who had gone across the border to chase the Viet Cong. The North Vietnamese troops would not have been there if they had not been driven across the border by the US and the S. Vietnamese. The end result was the Pol Pot regime which murdered somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million people. It was the communist Vietnamese who finally did something about it, by invading Cambopdia and driving Pol Pot from power. A humanitarian move IMHO and a damned sight better than the mess the Americans had made. In any case, I wonder how you can say that the Vietname war saved Thailand but not Laos and Cambodia. As far as Malaysia goes, the Brits had pretty well quashed any communist insurgencies while the Vietnam war was still being fought between the French and the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese refer to it as the 'American War'. What different does it make what you call it? The Russians lost the cold war because of Afghanistan and the cost of keeping up with the US in the arms race. They had swallowed the small cost of Vietnam long before - after all, they did not have any troops committed. I am well aware of the Russian presence in Vietnam having run into a number of them when I was there myself. We have high schools named after Winston Churchill - doesn't mean England runs the show here. It was indeed a nationalistic war. And it was brought about because the Geneva conference of 1954 called for the country to be temporarily split and then for general elections to be called. The South refused to call elections and that is why the North invaded. Once again we have the US intervening because it did not like the fact that a communist government had been democratically elected. If there is a civil war it will be a direct result of the invasion. There were no 'islamofascists' in Iraq until Bush blew in. Just as with Pol Pot, the US has made the situation much much worse. Bush had a just cause as far as 'islamo' whatchits when he invaded Afghanistan. He should have stuck to that. Kissinger is an American expansionist. His cold war perspective is bullshit.

Mike Wallace interviewed Bob Woodward on 60 Minutes concerning his book "State of Denial". One thing that came out of the interview is that Bush and Cheney are now having regular chats with Henry Kissinger. Once a month or so, says Woodward, whenever he's in town, Henry rings up George and Dick and drops in for a visit. Kissinger has always believed that the big mistake America made during the Vietnam war was to lose heart and pull out before the job was done, He is now saying that the only exit strategy for Iraq is victory. What Kissinger still doesn't seem to have figured out is that Vietnam, like Iraq, was a war started for all the wrong reasons. Guys like Kissinger believed in something called 'The Domino Theory'. They believed that the war in Vietnam was a war of conquest by the Communists and that if they were successful in Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes, one after the other... Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia.... and so this is why the US got involved - to stop the march of communism. In fact, Vietnam was a civil war being fought by Nationalist northern forces trying to kick out a brutal and corrupt government in the south. Once that happened, the war stopped. Laos, Cambodia, and the rest continued their march through history on their own paths, for good or for bad. The American government was so out of touch with reality that it had no clue this was at the heart of matters. Apparently, Kissinger has still not figured this out. And now he is telling Bush what to do in Iraq. Lord help us.

I, for one, don't. Who is the 'you' in "I think you understand my point."

Source Rue?

edit. mis-read of post.

See ya Rue. All the best.

Well Rue, that is good busy work for you. Comparing and contrasting the laws of each and every Arab League nation along with those of Malaysia and Indonesia. Report back when you have a clue.

When was the last time the country of Palestine beheaded someone?

OK jbg. Why is it that all reporters based in Israel during the 1982 attack on Lebanon had to have their copy approved by the IDF?

Right. In July of 1954, we have the 'Lavon Affair' or otherwise known as 'the Mishap'. Ben Gurion had decided that he had to destabilize the Nasser government of Egypt and Israeli agents were sent into Egypt. They planted bombs in mailboxes and tried to blow up movie theatres (gee, does this sound familiar?). The secret agents were caught by the Egyptians and put on trial. Ben Gurion appealed to Nasser to ask that the death penalty not be applied. In the previous year, a cabal of Moslem extremists had been caught and all put to death. The Egyptian courts sentenced 2 of the 9 Israeli plotters to death. One committed suicide in prison. Ben Gurion cried foul, saying that he had been betrayed and that the Israeli terrorists had been framed. He went public with this opinion. The Israeli electorate believed him.

First of all Rue, you are a shotgun. Your statements are not focussed. One could waste many many afternoons dealing with your mythinformation. Your excursions into the dhimmi laws are a case in point; and then there is your assault on the French... We have dealt with specific statements you have made. Many of them are unsubstantiated and not worth wasting our time on.

Well you know Rue, I have been reading about this in the newspapers since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Governments have made decisions based on the Israeli version of events. People have died and lost their homes - many, many people. In a democratic country, we all have a right to our say, and that right is based on accurate information about what has happened on the ground. When I think that I have been lied to, and I think that my government is making decisions based on mythinformation, than it is my right and my duty, as a member of the democratic electorate, to speak out. If you have verifiable sources to refute me, Rue, I welcome you to the debate. If not, then stand aside for those who might.