ScottSA

So do you think killing in His name is a characteristic of His creation of people? If so, wouldn't we all be doing it? If an omnipotent God creates something, he is completely responsible for its nature and characteristics. An omnipotent being is incapable of unintended outcomes. Unless you are omnipotent, how do you know that? The thing I find most notable about swealian arrogance is that it doesn't hesitate for a second before plunging ahead with see-through Sophist ninnery, so convinced of its own infallability that it doesn't even see the gaping holes in its armour.

Thanks Mr. Reagan, now will the next idiot stand up. Who does all the cleaning in Toronto, it certainly isn't nasty conservatives like you. As usual, call names and avoid the question. How empty.

This is one of the so-called 'moderate' Islamic organizations operating legally in Canada. Some of the leftists hereabouts can perhaps be forgiven for their blind support of all things Islam, because they haven't been kicked yet in the naughty bits on a personal level by it, but there's no excuse for these people to try to drag down our national security. http://www.caircan.ca/itn_more.php?id=2914_0_2_0_C

Just to clarify one point ... while I don't know what the formulation that a state has a 'right' to 'exist' is supposed to mean, I do believe (and have said before) that in the present state of affairs, the people of Israel have the right to self-determination and that any conceivable way of depriving them of that, or of moving them out of the territory of Israel, would amount to crimes against humanity or human rights. The "formulation" that a state has a right to exist is at the very core of international law as it is understood today. Perhaps as it is understood by you. I am unaware of anything that says states have free-standing 'existence' rights. Henceforth you'll be aware: Article 2, Principle 1: The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members. Implicit in this, the founding principle of the UN Charter, is the "free-standing" right to exist. You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face, sweal, but the spirit, the letter, and the intent of the Charter is based upon this understanding.

I love sweal's wiki-pontificate...

I highlighted the key flaw in the logic of your statement. The key flaw in mine is the same key flaw in yours. Someone has to define 'existential' threat. To Islam, an existential threat is anything that doesn't further it. To Cair or Cair-can, that means virtually all anti-terrorism measures which happen to trod on their toes, and to a hard-core Islamist, it's the the very existence of the west. Unfortunately you make the same mistake as do-gooders have made for centuries...they, and you, assume that all other folks see the world through the same eyes as you do, and that your definition of good is universal. It's not.

??????? All of those invasions involved an existential threat to the German people, according to the definitions supplied by Hitler as early as 1924. Hence the quest for leibenstrau. That makes those invasions "required" under BC Chick's criteria.

What a bizarre fantasy life some people lead! Indeed.

Did William die when I wasn't looking or something? No, and Charles didn't either.

Asking any one Muslim leader to apologize for all Muslims is like asking a Lutheran or Anglican or Presbyterian to apologize for all Protestants. There is no equivalent to the Pope. No there isn't. Yet lets imagine for a moment that the escapist fantasy that the terrorists are "a small minority" and that the "vast majority" of Muslims are "peaceloving, yada yada..." is true. That assumes that a small isolated sect within Islam is perpetrating all the hullaballoo all over the globe, and that every other Muslim is standing aghast at the violence. Now lets switch it around and imagine that it were a small protestant or Catholic Christian sect doing this. Would there be a deafening silence from mainstream Christianity? I daresay not. So where are the apologies from Islam?

What utter swealian nonsense. What does "swealian" mean? Help me there. Is it some racial or religious epithet? Yes. It refers to a race of bigheaded, hugemouthed invertibrates once prone to outbursts of what were known as "swealian psychotic episodes," or "swealian psychosis" for short. These odd collections of neurons also worship the alter of sweal, proclaiming in each and every instance that sweal is right, regardless of whether sweal knows anything about the subject or not. Sweal, currently known as Figleaf, once known and banned as The Terrible Sweal, and before that as s.weale, is the ambassador from planet swealia.

Colonel Mustard's study, with a lead pipe.

Americans have the worst morality of any western nation?? I'd like to see what information you're basing that statement on. Apparently not the per capita contributions to the latest Tsunami, or the general American response to every disaster around the world since 1945, or anything else based in reality. Apparently it's based on deeply help secrets within the core of the left.

First, Buffy seems to applaude Iran for signing the NPT and then breaking it, as if this is somehow morally superior to Israel not signing it and therefore not breaking it. I see where Canadian Liberals manage to have the balls to think signing Kyoto and then ignoring it is somehow morally superior to not signing it and therefore not breaking it. Second, a 'threat' is a government formally announcing a response to a specific action: eg: "if Germany invades Poland, a state of war will exist between Britain and Germany," or "if Iran develops nukes, Israel will use nukes." Specious "contingency plans" leaked by un-named senior officials are simply the usual noise that surrounds international tensions.

Just to clarify one point ... while I don't know what the formulation that a state has a 'right' to 'exist' is supposed to mean, I do believe (and have said before) that in the present state of affairs, the people of Israel have the right to self-determination and that any conceivable way of depriving them of that, or of moving them out of the territory of Israel, would amount to crimes against humanity or human rights. The "formulation" that a state has a right to exist is at the very core of international law as it is understood today. It's called the principle of "sovereignty", and I'm surprised that someone who bills themself as all knowing as you do doesn't know that (see article 2, the very first principle). In fact, most would argue that because of its centrality in the UN Charter, it even trumps the so-called right of self-determination that often stands as one of those many pesky contradictions in what passes for international law. How you arbitrarly elevate opposition to right of self-determination to a "crime against humanity" or "human rights," when it often stands in opposition to the right of non-interference (Canada and the Indians), just shows how little you actually understand about this topic.

You put that in strange terms, but it's not the topic here anyway. That puts it rather too mildly, as I think you know. It's illegal under international law as it stands today. Do I take you to mean, however, that there is no basis for Israel to claim part of the West Bank in a peace settlement? As I recall sweal, you are or were involved in some way with domestic law. International law is a horse of a different color entirely. International law as it stands today is bound up in a few long-standing conventions like the GC, Law of the Sea etc, and built around the UN Charter, which is itself built around the concept of sovereignty as it applies to the Westphalian system. It was not always thus, nor will it be always thus. Even during this particular period of definition...and I use the LoN as well as the UN as part of the same period...territory switches hands all the time. Nations spring up, borders change, and nations even cease to exist. In the case of the west bank, nothing that has happened to it since 1922 has any "basis" in international law, per se. It became part of the British mandate, was seized by Jordan, taken away from Jordan, which gave up its claim in the 80s, and now lies as a sort of legal no-man's land under Israeli occupation. It has never been a state, so sovereingty is not at issue until such time as it becomes a state. Israel, in other words, is not breaking international law by occupying it. Nor, arguably, would Israel be breaking international law by annexing it, if it chose to, for the following reasons: 1 The west bank is not a state and does not have claim to protection under sovereignty. 2 Jordan has already unilaterally annexed the west bank, so precedent is set. So while you may flippantly spin off the term "illegal," in order for you to defend the charge under the assumptions of current international law, you have to implicate everyone who has ever had their grubby paws on the west bank since the Romans invaded Judea. In other words, if Israel is in violation of international law, so is Britain and Jordan.

Lets be truthful here. Science as we know it today is only about 400 years old. The Earth existed for hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion years before life arose. And "life" at this time was nothing more then DNA molecules that could only make crude copies of themselves. It then took another 3 billion years too reach the level of amoeba. So to say "has science created a self-producing life form" is like asking a 6month old to write a 100 page theses on quantum mechanics. Yet you would ask us to believe that such an embryonic set of research criteria contains the potential to answer all? That's an article of pure faith.

Its much easier to believe that the government of an advanced democracy plotted to kill thousands of its own citizens by use of either a deathray or pre-planted explosives, and that not one of the hundreds and thousands of people who must have been involved has talked.

I would have thought that would be glaringly...nay, startlingly...obvious to even the most obtuse and sedentary armchair general. Do you really have no answer to your own question? Seemingly you have no answer -- at least none you cared to share in preference to launching peurile slights. Why DO you post here? Anyway, what is increasingly obvious is that there is a hawkish whispering/media stealth campaign to build Iran into the big villain of the day. The hawks responsible seem to have little sense or sensitivity to the rhymes and reasons of international realities and so their campaign continues to produce such easily puncturable miscues as Iran arming the Taliban, or drug growers in pickup truck amounting to government convoys. The only people who buy into such crap are the ignorant or those ideologically predisposed. The funny thing is, you'd think it would be enough to paint Iran with things it is really known to do ... detentions without trial, religiously motivated repression, torture of prisoners, intervention in the internal affairs of other countries in the region, ... Hm... maybe there would be too much irony in criticising them for those things. Hey sweal, at least I'm allowed to post here...you've already been banned. Is the answer to my rhetorical question not obvious to you?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Military intervention is necessary when: 1) there is an direct threat to one's country. 2) there is a direct existential threat to a people in this world. Darfur should have qualified under the second criteria ages ago. So you must applaude the invasion of Poland, France, and the USSR by Germany.

What support would you offer for that assertion? Logic. I was hoping for something more in the lines of citations of treaty provisions, court interpretations, etc. Logic often has little to do with international law, and your logic is rarely convincing. You're WAAAAY off topic. Please refer to the Original Post and get back to me. What about the Chinese example in Tibet, where the Tibetans posed no threat to China (other than having an unsuppressed religions)? ? ? What about it? (That seems sort of off topic too, frankly.) In other words sweal has no answer.

Tell us about the Warsaw Ghetto. Did those nasty Jews set about killing each other in that open air prison? I must have missed that part of history...no doubt covered up by some sinister Jewish plot. Please explain.

What utter swealian nonsense.

Well put

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we are an accident. A product of pure chance. Some people can't accept that reality and turn to religion for an explaination and a purpose. I don't need to read any further to see the futility of arguing with the blind arrogance of dogmatic certainty.