JB Globe

As I've told you before, the body count was verified by the Red Cross/Red Crescent - which as I've told you before, are the same organization. If you're going to dismiss the numbers of dead in Gaza because you don't trust the Red Cross/Red Crescent, than I'll have to remind you of this when you're quoting Red Cross stats in the future in some other conflict zone.

How old are you people? By 22 I had already moved on beyond this juvenile notion of "there are only two sides to the world and my side is the right side!" Some of you must be in your 40's or 50's. You've had plenty of time to grow up, there really is no excuse for you being this stupid at your age. And to avoid someone predictably putting words in my mouth: this goes for ANYONE who thinks that all of the world's problems are a result of the "left or right" and the world would be a utopia if everyone would just think like them.

For me, the line between parents having the freedom to instill their (sometimes bigoted) beliefs in their children, and child abuse got crossed when this child developed the idea that all non-white people are evil and should be killed. That's basically programming a kid to either commit or support murder. And I think we can all agree that parents teaching their kids that it's okay to kill people who aren't white is promoting violence against a group of people, which isn't covered under free speech laws.

If only Tamil groups and native groups protested in a way that complied with all civic, provincial and federal law, you would all be sympathetic to their cause, right? Then where were you when Tamils were protesting outside in the bitter cold of winter every day on the sidewalks of University? Not impeding pedestrians or cars? The answer is you didn't even know they existed, because no one pays attention to the concerns of minority groups until they make enough of a disruption to get people to pay attention. Same thing with Native Canadians - no one has ever heard of small and civil acts of awareness-raising or protest that go on all the time (ie - grandmothers walking around the Great Lakes), they only care about Native issues when they hold up traffic and people have to suffer the horror of getting to their cottage an hour later. All this talk about "I would be on their side if it wasn't for these protests which inconvenience me" are a lie people tell themselves so that they don't have to face the ugly truth: that race and ethnicity play a vital role in determining what protest movements you support or don't support, and what kind of protest you deem acceptable or not.

Exactly, I am extremely skeptical that the Sri Lankan government will embark on a real reconciliation process and as a result I think this conflict will simply take another form and will not end with the military defeat of the Tigers. I think they're looking at sustained domestic terrorism if they don't man-up and do the REAL hard political work of bringing together two peoples divided by a conflict for several decades.

It's done to test if the card is legit - if it's a fake ID the magnetic strip either won't have any data on it or it won't match up to the personal info on the front of the card.

You should've listened to your mother more: two wrongs don't make a right.

Yesterday a reporter from Al Jazeera English stated that citizens militias are being formed in the Northwest Frontier provinces in an effort to combat the Taliban and have even succeeded in ousting them from some towns. It appears that as some have speculated Pakistan is not nearly as fertile a ground for their extremism as had previously feared by some analysts. The difference between Pakistan and Afghanistan is that the former has experience with some level of democracy, even though it has been brief, and they can see that as bad as it's been in Pakistan it's better than what the Taliban are offering. In Afghanistan, they never had the chance to see what democracy is like, and given how much we're underfunding the development of a self-sustaining and stable government in that country they probably won't get that chance anytime son. If we want to make futher inroads against Taliban influence in Pakistan, the best bet is to support the efforts of reformers who have appeal across society like chief justice Iftikhar Chowdhry, who gets support from both secular lawyers and orthodox religious groups because his efforts are concerned with extending democratic justice to all sectors of society, regardless of people's income, or their ethnic or religious identity.

There would be a lot less "crazy murderous attacks" in Canada if we all didn't stigmatize mental illness so much to the extent that people would rather avoid admitting they have a problem and as a result not seeking assistance. All of this talk of "locking up the crazies" actually is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. People don't go get diagnosed because they're afraid of being locked up, which means that there is no intervention in their lives until they do something violent. If our mental health system was less oppressive, and if we were all more knowledgeable and understanding of mental health, we wouldn't have nearly as many "crazy people" on the streets potentially doing harms to others, but mostly harm to themselves.

It is if you subscribe those characteristics primarily to someone's genetic lineage. It is if you over-emphasize cultural components and disregard other factors. ie - "Jews are good at money because Jewish culture is obsessed with making money." - disregarding the fact that Jews have historically been good with banking and trade because it was considered a "lower-class" part of the economy to the aristocracy in the countries where Jews lived and was one of the only avenues open for them to move up the economic ladder. It was also a way to make them more indispensable to the economy of the country and therefor gain more insurance against the waves of antisemitism that happened from time to time. And as for "positive" stereotypes, they usually have a flip-side that can be negative. ie - the belief that Chinese people are inherently better at math usually comes with the belief that they lack critical thinking skills and are more "robotic" and "drone-like" than Europeans. And generally, folks don't have a problem with solid statistics that are put in proper context.

You seem to be saying that what makes being gay abnormal in your books is strictly numbers, right? That a small percentage of the population is gay, therefor being hetero is the norm. Numbers are the criteria in your mind as to what makes someone's identity normal or not. Of course, this logic also means that on a religious level you're abnormal for being a Jew, and on a human level you're abnormal for being white. Did you really think this one through all the way before you put up this post?

Another fine example of the head games hardliner Israeli and Palestinian supporters play in an effort to justify acts of aggression towards one another. But as a parable on it's own, it's pretty lame.

There's a difference between excusing something and putting something in perspective. What I'm saying is that if the Palestinian-Israeli situation gets resolved peacefully in a way that both sides are mostly happy with, there will be both a regional and worldwide significant decrease in antisemitism in Muslim countries. I also resent this myth that you seem to subscribe to that Christian countries (or Chrisian-majority countries) were better to Jews than Muslim nations were. You can really only say that about this past half-century and this only happened because of the Holocaust. It took the slaughter of millions to illustrate to Christians where the endgame of antisemitism is, and for them to start making an effort to stamp it out. It didn't happen because a bunch of Christians felt altruistic and went about abolishing it like slavery. Guilt had a lot to do with it, people were ashamed that they subscribed to a way of thinking that had it's endgame in Auschwitz. The cynical view to take would be that Western civilization needed to murder a few million Jews and others before it could take a look at the photographs and think "Oh, this is much more horrible than I thought, we should stop now, I think." Considering this perspective, I don't see how some of you can sit here and act all high-and-mighty when it comes to the issue of antisemitism in Christianity and Western Civilization.

Well, thank you for repudiating that myth I guess, but again, I never made the absolute statement that antisemitism is only related to Is & Pal.

Let's deal with the last bit of that first - please work on your reading comprehension: I never stated there is no antisemitism outside of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what I said (about 20 times now) is that Islam is no more inherently antisemitic than Christianity. So basically, Muslims have pretty much the same capacity to be antisemitic as Christians do. Scripture-wise I would argue Christians have more leeway than this, because at least there is legal protection in the Qu'ran, can't say the same about the bible. I don't know what's making people more upset - the fact that I'm arguing against this bogeyman hypothesis of Islam, or that I'm arguing against this myth they've built up about Christianity that it was so much nicer to us Jews than Islam was. And for the record, this is a view which is shared by Bernard Lewis as well as Jewish historians such as Claude Cahen, Shelomo Dov Goitein and Martin Kramer. Yes, I absolutely know what it means. in·her·ent - involved in the constitution or essential character of something : belonging by nature or habit. Meaning that antisemitism is no more characteristic of Islam than it is Christianity. Actually I'm being pretty straightforward about all of this, maybe this goes back to your reading comprehension again.

No, how about you do your own homework and google it yourself? While you're at it, read some articles from objective sources on Dhimmi status, and then compare the experience of Jews living under it to the experiences of Jews living in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. You'll quickly see that up until the last part of this past century it was probably a better idea to live in a Muslim nation than a Christian one, because at least in a Muslim one you had legal rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi#Treatment_of_Dhimmis Dhimmis were allowed to "practice their religion, subject to certain conditions, and to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy" and guaranteed their personal safety and security of property. Taxation from the perspective of dhimmis who came under the Muslim rule, was "a concrete continuation of the taxes paid to earlier regimes"[10] (but now lower under the Muslim rule[11][12][13]) and from the point of view of the Muslim conqueror was a material proof of the dhimmi's subjection.[10] Various restrictions and legal disabilities were placed on Dhimmis, such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.[14] Most of these disabilities had a social and symbolic rather than a tangible and practical character.[15] Although persecution in the form of violent and active repression was rare and atypical,[16] the limitations on the rights of dhimmis made them vulnerable to the whims of rulers and the violence of mobs.[17] While recognizing the inferior status of dhimmis under Islamic rule, Bernard Lewis states that in most respects their position "was very much easier than that of non-Christians or even of heretical Christians in medieval Europe."[18] For example, dhimmis rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and with certain exceptions they were free in their choice of residence and profession.[19] Yet there were constraints; the Muslims reserved the right to control the military and agriculture, leaving trade and business to the dhimmis.[20]

The Holocaust did not happen "long ago" in historical terms. Additionally, antisemitism is still rampant in Christian-majority countries like Russia. Christians aren't special, sorry to break it to you. They have as much a history of antisemitism as Muslims do.

Well that's descriptive.

To summarize, your solutions for America's current problems are: individual hard work, more nationalism . . . More wars against unspecified enemies (wars of choice? Imperialist wars?), and at the same time Isolationism? What wars does America need to fight? Why is it in vital danger without a war? And against whom?

In swashbuckling times, when states actually commissioned pirates, yes. But that's whole different ballgame than the modern era, no states sponsor pirates - they're all criminal enterprises. And like any other criminal enterprise they'll exploit regions where law enforcement and deterrence is weak, meaning they'll operate in and around failed states or regions within a working state that are on the frontier and where the central government cannot exert its authority. To get back to my original point - when Somalia did have a stable government - the Islamic Courts Union, they all but stopped piracy because they were able to enforce the law. What are we discussing here? Are you disputing that fact?

Sorry, the connection between failed states and lawlessness is coincidental?

^^^ - See, now that's reasonable, it's not hard to do people.

Treasonous? Really? Treasonous? Stop being hysterical and get a grip, Kimmy. You're completely blowing this out of proportion. In the words of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair: "This is one of the prices we pay for living in a free and democratic city and country." Why a minor inconvenience for a some people in Toronto enrages you all the way in Alberta is beyond me. And the fact that you expect to live in a democracy and at the same time never want to have to be inconvenienced by a protest is either naive or just unappreciative of what democracy is all about. Then it's boiling over nothing - no one was blocked from getting to the hospital, read Muddy's account again: what happened was traffic was backed up because the southbound lane on University Avenue was blocked by a sit-down protest. The hospitals in question are further up the street, the protesters were in front of the US Consulate. So you're speculating that the same police force that was shown to unofficially be using racial profiling, is in this case so extremely concerned about being accused of racism that they'll let things slide because the protesters aren't white? Right. Frankly I believe the actions of the police were dictated by a balancing act between two things: The Law & The Freedom of Expression. And maybe a good dose of PROFESSIONALISM helped keep things orderly for weeks of various protests, and only an hour or two of pushing and shoving. Why don't you try and find out? My guess is the situation would probably be the same if the protest was similar in nature to what actually occurred. I don't recall the protesters saying they were deliberately trying to block the hospitals, and I don't recall the police saying they were either. I could be wrong, I haven't read every article, maybe you could post the one in question? What I know they were trying to do was block the Dundas Streetcar, which is why the cops stepped in, but even that would have left the hospitals with access Southbound on University, off Elm (where the emergency entrance is for Sick Kids), Gerrard & Elizabeth. You're also forgetting the tens of thousands of civilians confined to the jungle in the middle of the conflict, and the fact that Sri Lanka is refusing to allow them safe passage out of the area. Just because one side in a conflict commits atrocities doesn't excuse the other side from following international law.

As far as I can tell, the same laws apply to everyone. And before you call these folks thugs, keep in mind that for weeks there was no violence, even when 80 000 people ringed the downtown core, Chief Blair even commented on that protest for how civil and organized it was. In the end, there was some shoving and a push to Dundas - a disappointment, but considering how civil it was the rest of the time, I don't think the thug label is accurate. Save that word for folks that deserve it, like OCAP.

Since the coordinated efforts began three years ago, the amount of piracy has been following steadily every year. In my mind this shows that states with actual functioning governments are able to enforce the law, while states in anarchy aren't - I'm sure you don't disagree with that basic premise, correct? Also, the waters in question are different: the straits are better suited to piracy because it's narrow (easier to find and ambush ships) and there's thousands of rivers for the small boats to run up and hide once patrols come looking. In Somalia it's big open water. Now if you could only find a criminologist or two who agreed with that statement.