Higgly

Holy cow. No other ideas? Here's one - Michael Ignatieff. Yes folks, the guy who has spent his whole professional life living in the USA and the UK has suddenly decided he would make a good candidate for Prime Minster. He would like us all to know that he supports the war in Iraq. Jackass.

Wong has a house on the Bridle Path complete with Philippina maids. The last time she had a clue was when she was living in Beijing and Deng was in charge. Before that, she had turned state's evidence and had a Chinese family banished to a life of hardship. End of story. Simpson is a much more intelligent reference. Wong has no balls.

Why don't we try to work with what is on the table instead of the feast we've read about in fairy tales? What possible reason could you have to assign to the Jews the same fate that is now suffered by the Palestinians? Don't take this question lightly.

The state of Israel is a fact, and Jews the world over are better off for it. It is time to address the humanitarian catastrophe that resulted from its creation and think about compensating those who have suffered from it... The Palestinian Arabs (both Moslem and Christian) through the creation of a viable Palestinian state and the surrender of all illegal settlements. The 'right of return' issue needs to be negotiated seriously. Many Palestinians have legal deeds (from the Ottomans, the Brits, and often from the Zionists) to the land they were forced to give up. It is time to recognize those deeds and deal with them. Compensation to the neighbouring states who have suffered tremendous losses by their accommodation of Palestinian refugees: Jordan and Lebanon for a start. There was a time when I would have mentioned Kuwait, but they have taken their pound of flesh and their copy book is blotted for what they have done. The payment of war reparations to Lebanon for the damage that Israel caused in the 1982 bombardment. It is hard to forget a description of a visit paid by the journalist Robert Fisk to the home of an Israeli Air Force pilot who participated in the 1982 bombing of Lebanon. While Bach played in the background, this guy described how Lebanese targets were bombed. The pilots were given pictures of the buildings they were to bomb. The buildings had been identified by 'informers' on the ground inside Lebanon. The Israeli pilots then flew over Beirut and located the buildings by sight. On a second run, they went in and bombed the buildings. This was a country in the middle of a civil war. Who's to say who the hell those spotters were and why they were identifying any particular building? Altogether, 15,000 Lebanese civilians were massacred. Israel needs to compensate Lebanon for what it did during that war. Big time. Israel, and its sponsor the US, owe a tremendous debt to Middle Eastern society. It is time to pay the piper.\ Finally there is Jerusalem. I was born a Christian. I understand how there can be so many claims on this holy land. It should be declared an international city. I have no solutions about how it should be administered, but as far as I am concerned, nobody can own Jerusalem.

There are so many! Here is another... Noah Feldman, general gadfly, lawyer and neocon about town (i.e, inside the Beltway). This guy came up to Canada (so few of them bothered!) and testified (on CPAC no less) before a Parliamentary committee on why Canada should support the invasion of Iraq. Here's another. Ann Coulter. Neocon celebré. Her book "How to Talk to a Liberal, If You Must" sold a lot of copies. She has money if anyone wants to sue her. Looking for a Canadian? Barbara Frums' son - what's his name Frum. Coined the phrase 'Axis of Evil'. When his wife made the dumb ass mistake of saying so, he got canned. That's when he suddenly decided to take an interest in Canadian politics. All of W's speech writers need to understand the first rule of working for W. He may be an undereducated moron, but he can afford to buy YOU, so you had better be prepared to shut yer mouth about who is writing his speeches.

So you agree with me that bullies need to be investigated and prosecuted. Right on dude. Why don't shooters target their bullies? If you watch 'Bowling for Columbine' you will see a couple of guys assembling a ritualized response. At some point, they just decided to react. My theory is that people who 'go postal' take it as much as they can and then suddenly explode. Unfortunately most of them die before they can elaborate their side of the story. These are all people who do not have the equipment to deal with what life has handed them. It's time to recognize this and provide safeguards. My suggestion is to target the bullies. As for what has changed. Why not look at the killing power available to individuals in our society? Don't think this only involves guns. There are now a number of cases on record in both Canada and the US of people who have driven their cars into crowds of people. How are you going to stop that? It's time to deal with the problem at the source. ------------------------------ Be there or be square.

I'm not sure I can add anything here to make you look any worse than you have already done for yourself. You and Argus need to bring in reinforcements. You're getting clobbered here.

Exactly. Pick your venue. Broadcasts are for people with CRTC licenses. Thanks for pointing this out. In some forums, jbg would be banned for these kind of shenanigans

So the US Military is mired in a real mess in Iraq. The latest from these guys is that they are giving up on their previous strategy to conquer the whole country and have decided to conquer Baghdad instead. They are going to build a moat (yes, that's right, a moat) around the whole city so they can keep out the insurgents. Hard to believe that the US is retreating into a siege mentality, but there you have it. I thinnk it's time to give credit where credit is due. Whose idea was this? And who was pushing this idea? I have a few ideas, but I hope other s will chine in as well. Firstly, as to whose idea this was.... The idea of invading and conquering Iraq was first presented in a paper written by Paul Wolfowitz (now head of the World Bank!) in a paper he wrote for Benjanmin Netanyahu (Bibi!) who was part of a consultancy group (headed by Richard Perle) that Bibi (!) had hired. Both Wolfowitz and Perle have strong ties to the Israeli Likud party, and in their youths were part of a 'kitchen' group that advocated taking a strong hand with Arab states in the Middle East in favour of Israel. But these guys did not do it on etheir own. They had lots of help. There were a lot opf people, including a number up here in Canada, who pushed, and pushed hard, for the invasion of Iraq. I am going to add a few here, I leave to other posters to search their memories and add others who pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Edward Greenspan - Editor in Chief, Globe and Mail Margaret Wente, columnist, Globe and Mail John Ibbitson, columnist, Globe and Mail Marcus Gee, columnist, Globe and Mail Janice Stein, Harrowston Chair of Conflict Management, , founding Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto There is a very long list here. Do you know any? It's time to name names.

Apologies for starting a new thread over yours. I think we posted at the same time.

Well it is hard to find a way to piss off about a billion people but it seems that Benedict has done just that. According to him, the entire Islamic world should be viewed through George Bush's beer goggles. Where did he go wrong? Now if I was a significant Moslem cleric, I would think about launching a law suit against the Catholic Church in a jurisdiction that supports such things and in which the Church has major capital holdings. Now let's see. Where could that be.... The other option of course is to point out all the damage done by Christians over the past 100 years or so. Let's see.... Timothy McVeigh, Adolph Hitler, Slobodan Milosovic..... of man. The opportunity. The Opportunity. What a pity. The Catholic Church has missed a great opportunity to help build a peace between two warring worlds. What a very great pity. Shows you how important it is to pick leaders wisely - as if we needed more of that.

Not surprised you'd want to forget this little skirmish. I kicked your ass. Time to bone up on your current event facts, Argus.

Saddam fought the Iran/Iraq war using British and American armaments supplied on credit, as well as US spy satellite info. During this little episode he had a number of very friendly meetings with our old friend Donald Rumsfeld. Sounds pretty damned enthusiastic to me. What Ayatollahs are you talking about? This is Iraq we are talking about. The territory was ruled by the Turks for some 600 years up until WWI, at which time it was taken over by the British who created the country out of nothing and installed Feisal as King (formerly a Bedouin Hashemite Prince who once ruled part of what is now Syria). Feisal was deposed by an army coup and the country was then taken over by Saddam. Where are the Ayatollahs in this history? If you are talking about Iran, "the Ayatollahs" have shown no interest in invading Iraq at any time. Iran did not invade Iraq, it was the other way around. Saddam was the aggressor and that is why the Americans were so happy with him. Get your facts straight. At the very least you can start by learning how to spell Ayatollah.

There's your first problem. You really need to get out more. A really sad testament to the old saying "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Yes, this was pretty bad. One thing that needs be said here, though, is that Ahmadinejad didn't start these rants until after Israel announced that is was considering air strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities to take them out the way it did with Iraq some years back. As far as the US and Iran go, don't forget that Iraq invaded Iran with a lot of help and encouragement from the Americans. It takes a long time to forget a war that killed hundreds of thousands of your people. We in the west have very selective and very short memories about the Middle East. Far too much so. Here's another Middle East factoid. Once upon a time, Iran had a democratically elected government. That government announced that it was going to nationalize the oil industry. Bingo, the CIA and MI5 engineered a coup that put in the Shah of Iran - one of the most brutal dictators as ever walked the face of the earth. This was standard operating procedure for these guys. They did the same thing in Chile, where they put in the butcher Pinochet who had the democratically elected president Allende murdered by the army.

Who were those 15,000 combatants you are talking about? Enquiring minds want to know. I am interested as well in your numbers for outside of Beirut, since it is well known that the PLO were headquartered in South Beirut where the refugee camps were also located. The target of the exercise was the PLO, was it not? The numbers were put together by the Associated Press who went around to the hospitals and collated death lists. As soon as it was published, the Israelis started a massive campaign to discredit the numbers and the people who had published them. I see that campaign still has resonance 20 years later. I will, however, grant you that the 17,000 includes over 2,500 Palestinian refugees slaughtered by the Phalange (under the supervision of the IDF and Shin Beit). This happened after the PLO were put on ships and shipped off to Tunisia, leaving the refugees completely defenseless. No combatants there. Sharon was in line to be prosecuted by the World Court for this little bit of nastiness but luckily for him, a critical witness met with an 'accident'. Funny how it is that anything negative said about an Arab country is taken as gospel but anything negative said about Israel is taken as an anti-Israeli lie. Speaking of lies though, it should be noted here that after it was all over, the IDF tried to let on that the civilian death toll in Lebanon was in the neighbourhood of 500 people. A real kneee-slapper, that. There are precious few good guys in the Middle East. Mostly just psychopths and victims.

Well Israel slaughtered 17,000 Lebanese civilians in its 1982 bombardment of Lebanon - directed by Ariel Sharon, minister of Defense at the time. The stated objective of this action was the expulsion of the PLO whose terrorists had killed 105 Israelis between 1973 and 1978. Would you say that qualifies for mass murder? Well you have to be careful when you start talking about Saddam. Up until the time he invaded Kuwait, he was the darling of the western world. The US encouraged his invasion of Iran and in fact provided him with satellite pictures of Iranian troop placements which he put to good use gassing the Iranian troops. Many of the Iranians who died in that little adventure were gassed to death. After Saddam was expelled from Kuwait, the CIA started to broadcast (through a radio station inside Kuwait called Radio Free Iraq) to the Shias and Kurds that they should rise up against Saddam and start a revolution. They did this thinking that the US military (now well inside the Iraqi border) would come to their rescue. When Saddam's generals came to US General Norman Schwartzkopf to negotiate the terms of their departure, they asked if they were still allowed to use their military helicopters. General Norm said "Sure, go ahead!" Saddam then used those helicopters to gas the kurds and slaughter the Shias who were trying to start the revolution. The US military did nothing to help them and instead turned around and went back to their bases in Saudi Arabia. This wholesale slaughter was used as justification by the US for setting up the famous no-fly zones - of course, after the slaughter was all over. Then came the sanctions which killed millions through lack of food, medicine, medical equipment. Even medical textbooks were banned by the sanctions. As has been pointed out by another poster here, Saddam was agreeing to just about every inspection requested of him. Saddam was a nasty customer, no doubt about it, but I am not seeing a lot of innocent faces anywhere in this sorry tale nor in fact anywhere in the Middle East.

Daddyhominum's comments about bullying are very appropriate here. This has become widespread in our society, particularly with the the spread of the internet. It is now possible to broadcast defamatory comments about someone to hundreds or even thousands of people with the click of a mouse - complete with a digital photo, and often without them knowing what is being said or by whom. Who cares whether the comments are true, half-true, or completely false - just pass it on for a good read to lighten the day of your loved ones. Why should they question it? After all, they got it from someone they trust! Watch the target squirm as his life is filled with assault, vandalism, non-verbal and verbal harrassment. What good fun for friends and family alike. The news reports I have read say that Gill, the shooter, like the guys at Columbine, was targeted by bullying. People who are targeted by bullying frequently seek refuge in the outcast community. It is about time we started to think about the true cost of bullying and start bringing bullies to justice. This is simply another form of assault and, when it becomes a constant in somebody's life, the law of unintended consequences may very well come into effect. This aspect of the Gill shootings needs to be investigated seriously and thoroughly. Those who are looking about to lay blame for this tragedy, should spend some time focussed on the bullies in Gill's life.

It is about as eloquent as your post. Well why don't we call it by its other names "cycle of violence", "muerta"... Let's see ... primitive, reactionary, mindless...

It should be noted here that bubblehead Bush's adventure in Iraq was conceived and heavily pushed by neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, both of whom have strong ties to Israel's Likud party. So strong in fact that the idea of invading Iraq first saw the light of day in a paper written by Wolfowitz and Perle when the two were working as consultants to Benjamin Netenyahu back in the early 90s. And guess which country has so far been the only one to see any benefit from the invasion of Iraq?

What a load of crap. How about this one: Christians believe in turning the other cheek while Jews believe in an eye for an eye? What a bigot. Sodom and Gomorrah. I can't believe it. How about Abraham sacrificing his son? Go back to the mountain Moses.

Nonsense. Disarming Hezbollah and folding it into the Lebanese army was under active public discussion in Lebanon at the time of the last outbreak. Less than a year earlier, Lebanon had expelled the Syrian army and secret service (no mean feat) after having had its Prime Minister murdered by Syrian agents. Prior to that, Lebanon had finally brought years of civil war to an end and embarked a massive reconstruction. All the more difficult given the damage that Israel did the last time it went psychopathic. Lebanon was dealing with its issues. The problem was not that Lebanon was not honouring its agreements. The problem was that Lebanon had more than it could deal with all at the same time. Israel once again has fled Lebanon with its tail between its legs and the Israeli public whining about how things had gone wrong and who should be fired. Israel needs to leave Lebanon alone to work out its problems. I'll leave aside the Security Council condemnation. How many of those have we seen? How about Resolution 446? Given the general environment in the Middle East, the incidents you describe are minor border skirmishes and do not justify Israel's response. Reminds me of the neighbourhood mafioso who breaks the kneecaps of anyone who looks at his girlfriend. Israel the goon state.

Well OK, if you insist. The missile attacks didn't start until after Israel started bombing Lebanon. Sort of like Ahmadinejad didn't start his anti-Israeli rhetoric until Israel announced it was thinking of bombing the Iranian nuclear installations like it had done with Iraq. Then we have the Holocaust cartoon contest that was a response to the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed. It's simple Newtonian mechanics really. For every action....

I love the thinking here. A handful of soldiers get kidnapped and shot and an entire country is pulverized to smithereens and thousands die. Sort of like the 1982 invasion where Israel slaughtered 17,000 civilians in Lebanon because 105 Israelis had been killed by PLO terrorists between 1973 and 1978.

The convenient memory lapse. How useful that can be. I trifle self-serving dontcha think?