WIP

I really don't care, and nobody else should either, since he's not likely going to be Prime Minister, and even if he did, Liberal Prime Ministers have the tradition of saying anything to win elections and moving left or right afterwards.

You guys are just as bad as these economists who pollute the news broadcasts! Nobody actually knows the values of any of these international markets ever since we discovered the still-growing quantity of derivative investments made on the side, along with the currency price-fixing scams like the almost never heard of LIBOR scandal which was swept under the rug. But the fundamental problem is that economists work the math of trendline analysis and never consider that their wizardry only works as long as economies still have capacity for growth...and in the real world...the real finite world we all have to live in, there are LIMITS to growth and I would argue that we are hitting those limits now. For an economist, nature is just a set of raw materials waiting to be turned into products. But in the real world, economies don't work when the natural life support systems we all depend upon no longer function properly! Over the last 40 years, we've squeezed more ketchup out of the bottle, but eventually that bottle empties. And I believe the anemic growth and fake growth (especially in China) are manifestations of the fact that our world is not allowing growth as traditionally understood, and growth now can only come through others losing wealth and having their assets seized. That's mostly why we live in very dangerous times today. So, what if economic growth doesn't come back and the cycle is broken? I think this is why there has been so little attention on the slowing economies in the US and around the world. And when investors start wondering if they will ever see the returns on their longterm investments, that's when the crash happens.

Canada has long been dependent on resource exploitation and export, but this Prime Minister (who you tell us you support now) has followed the same strategy as Australia's.....thinking we could just keep supplying more and more dirty energy resources to an ever-upward Chinese economy.....how has that been working out lately? It's about to get much worse next year and the year after!

You won't see any "survival of the fittest" "might is right" theorists pontificating on human nature actually crack open a book on real paleo-anthropology research. And yes there's good reasons why they avoid the subject: first being that our ancestors wouldn't have survived the ice ages of the Pleistocene and especially the fallout of a supervolcano explosion 70,000 years ago if they had been following modern rightwing virtues of selfishness and competition!

Maybe some of the right wing clowns who are still fighting communist ghosts of the past, can show me one country that has a better quality of life after communism.

You haven't actually read my posts then!

And that's off the topic, but the ethnic cleansings and land thefts is another topic that can't easily be discussed on these forums.....a few have tried in the past, but eventually quit. I might take a stab at it, but note that America's growth and prosperity hinged partly in the early years of Manifest Destiny on taking Indian lands for growing cotton and exploiting available underground resources. Every example around the world where settlers come in and displace native populations follows similar narratives of God gave this land to us, and told us to kill off the natives who resisted.

Him again! Now there's a real fountain of wisdom.

So, we're supposed to look the other way when people pretending to be something they are not...and Worse: trying to enforce the moral rules they don't uphold, are exposed as total frauds! And we're supposed to look the other way when so many rich and powerful are among the names on the list. And we're supposed to feel sorry for the creep who started a website he calls "Ashley Madison" for some reason! I have as much sympathy for him as I do for the pimp who made all the Girls Gone Wild videos and ended up bankrupt!

Hi, conservatroll. Yes, I often go to Mondoweiss, Counterpunch, Washington's Blog, TomDispatch, Antiwar.com, Decline of the Empire....and I'm sure lot's of my other rss feeds you would try to remove from the internet if you could! If Mondo quotes sources such as NY Times, ABC News, CNN...only one source in the part I quoted was from a Palestinian news source, then I'll take from their article rather than splicing together a narrative from source material. And what's wrong with the Guardian? I trust them a lot more than your right wing propaganda sites! I didn't know that it's a marxist approach to judge two sides in a conflict by first assessing their relative military and economic power, but if that's marxist, it's one more thing that Karl got right....the other one would be how capitalist economic systems are fundamentally unstable and irrational...prone to boom and bust cycles....which right wing economists never seem to understand why....maybe they are the ones who need to read Das Kapital instead of droning on about the evils of communism! We're expected to get bent out of shape by the right wing story that Iran might get The Bomb, at a time when Israel has hundreds of nukes that are completely unregulated. I would find it more of a concern if Israel's ally and Iran's foe - Saudi Arabia gets its hands on some nukes! Simple facts are that Israel is in the same position now as South Africa back in the 80's. The South African Government could point to the ANC coalition with the Communist Party SA, and instances of the ANC using terrorism in attacks and on suspected informants, but that silver bullet lost its relevance when even America started realizing that supporting them was more trouble than it was worth.

You're welcome! I probably avoid the topic most of the time because I know in advance that the pro-Israel lobby is more widely based and deeply financed than the oil lobby, and just about every other special interest group. As soon as you say the obvious like how a nation can claim to be both democratic and dedicated to one specific ethno-religious group or noting that the sealed off territory of Gaza is effectively an open air prison, or noting the similarities between the encircling and annexing strategies in the West Bank with apartheid South Africa's policy of forcing black populations in tiny...supposedly independent bantustans, and the dramatic difference in the way world leaders (except Reagan and Thatcher) reacted then, and how catatonic they are now when trying to address Israeli policies...etc. etc. and....well the swarm comes after you!

I'm just happy that the PC's (Petroleum Conservative Party) have deemed this forum worthy of trolling and disseminating their propaganda.

As if it's hard to find! First, regarding Operation Cast Lead: Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza . And about those apartment buildings: Controversial, illegal, and documented: Israeli military strategies in Gaza Now, what I find especially of interest to me, are the revelations that came out about how Israel today is totally dependent on its weapons and warfaring industries for economic gain, and why they are so important to western leaders as well as many dictatorial regimes around the world as revealed in the documentary movie The Lab New Film Exposes the Israeli Weapon and Security Industry And the documentary can be found here: http://www.gumfilms.com/projects/lab What it boils down to is: a long-running dispute that runs hot and cold over a period of decades, demands so much in resources from the State of Israel that it becomes a nation centered on fighting wars and designing weapons and urban warfare tactics for foreign buyers....and that's why criticism of Israeli policies is so hard to find in mainstream to conservative circles here. It's the ultimate statement in evil and cynicism that an Islamist party opposed to any negotiations with Israel, was fighting against the PLO, and in the process was aided and abetted by Israel to weaken the PLO's ability to come together to form a unified Palestinian movement. And then, when Hamas forms a government in the Gaza territory, Israel is motivated to find excuses to go to war in Gaza for mostly financial reasons....testing new weapons and tactics and selling both to international buyers!

It was a false flag operation. The New World Order has a Josh Duggar body double who's doing Ashley Madison and porn sites.

That's what's fascinating about this sordid little story! It's one of the few times when it's hard to guess where people will line up on an issue and for what reasons.

I haven't caught up with all the posts yet, but I'm surprised everyone so far who's lamenting the violation of privacy, missed the reason why the hackers did their data dump: Ashley Madison claims to erase information of clients who pay a fee to leave and have their identities scrubbed from the site...obviously they didn't do their jobs...because Joshie old boy and thousands of other cheating philanderer's data was accessible to the hackers. The hackers warned the company to come clean that they didn't really remove old client's data and they refused several times....hence the data dump that everyone's talking about!

And then...if we're to believe you're for real...you joined the side that cornered the market on self righteous hypocrisy!

I guess that's off this topic, but think of all the things we wouldn't have known about..or would have remained rumours prior to Wikileaks and the Snowden dumps!

Some married people don't consider a company deliberately enticing people to have secret affairs to be a public service....or maybe I'm too boring to risk turning my comfortable life upside down...who knows! I have nothing against people living whatever lifestyles they want to pursue....if they want to have affairs, then they need to tell their partners and maybe present a case for open marriage or something, but I hope Ashley Madison goes under....and I don't even feel that sorry for all of the clandestine clients cheating and trying to screw around, thinking their information was secret!

Celebrities of any kind do not enjoy the same degrees of privacy as average people. That's the down side of cashing in on fame! It doesn't just apply to politicians, and I'm sure there's going to be lots more celebrities stumbling out of the closet as more revelations unfold. Specifically regarding Josh Duggar: he had no choice about being the child of media whores in a breeding contest (they were really trying hard for "20 and counting"), but once he became an adult, Josh was charting his own course and collecting cash from right wing christian sources...any embarassment for him and his fans is fully deserved!

Most of those claims that Hamas was using civilians as "human shields" was just a bullshit way of excusing their death tolls of civilians. The IDF has deliberately targeted hospitals, apartment buildings and media centers with foreign journalists during their Gaza invasions. But as I said before, there is a pile of circumstantial evidence that these invasions are motivated by the desire to test new counter-insurgency weapons and battle tactics, and political advantage - Netanyahu trying to bump up his poll numbers before an election, than they have anything to do with "fighting terrorism." As I said before, Israel has set up a deliberate policy of dismantling Palestinian communities and ethnic cleansing their way towards a larger Jewish state while the UN agencies, the US and allies just say tsk tsk and do NOTHING about it. I don't have a strong burning interest in following Middle East issues as some here have, but my axe to grind is mostly about watching Canada go from being a neutral, bipartisan nation to fully in the Neocon tank with the US, England, Saudi Arabia (now there's an interesting part of this unholy alliance) etc..

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton made the...what could be fatal mistake of allowing two BLM protesters back stage after one of her scripted rallies, to talk about their issues. Hillary is so vain and accustomed to dealing with weasles in MSM and the Democratic Party, that she just thought she could talk her way past her own track record when she piloted through some of the worse "tough on crime" bills back in the 90's, when Billie was triangulating his way to the center and taking away Republican issues. Democracy Now posted the 16 min. video with transcript yesterday, and a brief interview with the protesters afterwards. I don't have a dog in the Democratic Party's pointless presidential race, but I'd say that if Bernie comes off looking bad for getting mad about being interrupted by protesters at a Netroots conference last month, Hillary's unmasked arrogance makes her look much worse! This is the prevalent attitude of wealthy privileged elites whether they call themselves liberals or conservatives!

No, I'm a hardline protectionist, because I don't believe the issue should focus around arguments on whether free trade vs. tariffs and duties provides the most optimal economic outcomes to begin with. An upside to globalization policies is about as ludicrous as looking for an upside to slavery and colonialization.....and the exploitation encouraged by globalization puts the open borders to trade and free flow of capital in the same ballpark. But it has to be pointed out that none of the developed world's economies reached their levels of wealth and productivity through the kinds of free trade regimes they are forcing on poorer nations of the world! But, the most important issues are how globalization has dramatically increased carbon output and resource consumption (including drawing down renewables like water and topsoil). When nations are locked into these internationalist trading schemes, they lose effective control to make independent policies to protect their own environmental and resource interests. Everything in a poor undeveloped part of the world is up for exploitation by whoever pony's up the cash to buy land, water rights and underground resources.

I think political advisers call it the Change The Subject strategy.