WIP

That's right, history is not objective, but I didn't feel like arguing such a stupid point! The decision of what are important historical events and WHOSE history is going to be written down and preserved make it very subjective.

Yeah, I was one of them! But, it wasn't done by a man biting off my foreskin! It was a surgical operation performed by a doctor in a hospital. Regardless of what people think regarding circumcision, the circumstances of where and how it is done are very important.

Yes it is! Which is why what astonishes me most about this thread is that it is from someone in a minority religion, taking stuff from a site run by a Mormon fanatic (Glenn Beck), because both of them think that their religions are part of the white, conservative mainstream in the U.S.. We'll see just how far Christian Evangelicals are willing to tolerate Mormonism in the coming years, but any Jewish Orthodox extremist should be forewarned that Christian Zionism is a very recent phenomena historically, and there are undercurrents within the same right wing movements who see Jewish conspiracy theories when they notice Jewish names of bankers and media ownership. And, even the Christian Zionists expect all Jews to become Christians in the last days; so this marriage of convenience between Zionists and right wing Evangelicals cannot last! But, what bothers me most about this kind of thread is that it makes no attempt to talk with or read what Shia Muslims say about rituals like Ashura. Do most Shias practice this? Do they approve of it, or want it phased out? I can tell you as point of fact that Shias are the major oppressed minority group all across the Arab Sunni World, and that might be a factor in what is perceived as extremism. But, why are westerners who hate Muslims in general, and want to destroy every branch of it, working in cooperation with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and others, who represent the most reactionary movement within Islam in the last 200 years? I am reminded again how the names change from freedom fighter to terrorist and back again, depending on U.S. foreign policy interests.

I don't think it matters whether he can find "something gruesome enough;" there are real life examples from court trials involving rabbis spreading AIDS and other diseases through their unusual and revolting method of circumcising male babies....I really hope there aren't any videos or pictures! The point is once again that those living in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones. And, an even more important lesson should be that mocking other people's religious beliefs is not going to reduce religious extremism; it's just going to increase divisions and barriers.

Why didn't mention that your source is crazy Mormon fanatic Glenn Beck's site? The actual source on RT might actually have useful background material to put the Ashoura festival in context. Don't forget to buy gold!

You just never thought to mention them I suppose. In other words, you're arguing against your own strawman enemies.

Britain and France were competing over who had the right to colonize the world...try again!

How merciful! In case you weren't aware, that "hand tied behind their backs" is the supply of American missiles and military hardware needed by Israel to prosecute their wars. If the Israeli Government wanted to invade Gaza, but the WhiteHouse did not, then no invasion! On the other hand, it's more than likely that the Gaza bombing campaign was just a dry run to test missiles and missile defense systems before the joint U.S./Israeli war on Iran coming up very shortly. Or, it may just be a matter of playing the waiting game until Gaza collapses in a humanitarian catastrophe in a few years when drinking water supplies are exhausted: Israel’s destruction of infrastructure has brought to the brink of collapse the water and sanitation sector which was already dire after years of blockade. The destruction of the sewage system led to mass amounts of sewage flooding into ground water, which was already threatened by pollution, over-abstraction, intrusion of sea water. 90 million liters of sewage are now being discharged daily to the sea as the current waste water treatment plants are working beyond their designed capacity. [3] 90 percent of the Coastal Aquifer is now unfit for human consumption and it is expected to become completely unusable by 2016, and the situation will be irreversible by 2020 if no action is taken. [4] Improving the water situation in Gaza remains very difficult since Israel prevents the entry of the materials needed for essential WASH projects. A year has passed since Israel declared the ease of the blockade. However, less than a fifth of WASH materials have been allowed in. Add to that the lack of fuel and the power cuts which affect the operation of the water and sanitation system. [5] http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/palestinians-running-out-of-drinking-water-as-israeli-offensive-continues.html

And your selective use of history ignores the fact that there were pogroms and persecutions of Jews in Christendom also, depending on the mood of the times. Persecutions in the Middle Ages Main article: Jews in the Middle Ages From the 9th century CE, the medieval Islamic world classified Jews (and Christians) as dhimmi, and allowed them to practice their religion more freely than they could do in medieval Christian Europe. Under Islamic rule, there was a Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century,[83] when several Muslim pogroms against Jews took place in the Iberian Peninsula; those that occurred in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.[84][85][86] Several decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were also enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from the 11th century. Jews were also forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad several times between the 12th and 18th centuries.[87] The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147,[88] were far more fundamentalist in outlook, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated.[89][90][91] Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands,[89] while some others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.[92] During the Middle Ages in Europe there was persecution against Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. A main justification of prejudice against Jews in Europe was religious. The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were destroyed. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in Germany were subject to several massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, the expulsion of 100,000 Jews in France; and in 1421, the expulsion of thousands from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.[93] First Crusade Main article: Persecution of Jews in the First Crusade Defending in the Holy Land The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June–July 1099) in fierce battles. At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known and include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza.[2][3] Massacre of Jerusalem Jews fought side-by-side with Muslim soldiers to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders.[4] Saint Louis University Professor Thomas Madden, author of A Concise History of the Crusades, claims the "Jewish Defenders" of the city knew the rules of warfare and retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" since the Crusaders had breached the outer walls.[5] According to the Muslim chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi, "The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads."[6]

Famous last words I'd say! The Turks were a colonial power in Arab lands....much like Britain and France, in case your biases make it impossible for you to notice. What happened to England and France when they decided to take the war to Turkish territory? What happened to the Galipoli Campaign? They intended to divide all of the Ottoman Empire between them as the spoils of war.

You're welcome. You should check out Gert Korthof's homepage for other books he's reviewed: http://www.wasdarwinwrong.com/ He's got everything covered -- Neo-Darwinist, alternative evolutionary theories, creationist theories...Intelligent Design etc., theistic evolutionary theory....you name it, he's got it covered! It's the first place I look if someone comes up with THE ANSWER.

There may be many evolutionary adaptations that can be better explained by symbiosis than through competition. I haven't really read the writings on the subject by Lynn Margulis, but I heard her interviewed a few times, and she did stress the point that she felt there was some degree of male chauvinism involved in all of the focus on competition between species and "selfish" genes, that prevented her male colleagues from noticing the examples where cooperation could serve as a better explanation than competition. But, again, whatever degree symbiotic theory explains evolutionary changes in living organisms, it doesn't disprove evolution! It just demonstrates the need to alter or adjust the present theories about how evolution occurs. There are alternatives to gene-centered evolutionary theories; most notably right now are group selection/multilevel selection theories that originated among biologists like E.O. Wilson - who study colony insects, and believe some of their evolutionary adaptations are difficult, if not impossible to explain at a gene level or even a species level. Maybe they have contributions to make also to understand how life develops, adapts and changes; but the one theory that went in the trashcan for good, is the one that was based on human intuition -- that all living creatures are individual creations which have always existed in their present forms.

I try to ignore these threads, but every so often, curiosity gets the best of me! Your antievolution source doesn't bother to explain that symbiosis is alternative evolutionary theory to natural selection, not a contradiction of the process of evolution itself! It's been pointed out, time and time again, through one thread after another, that attacking Darwin, or even Darwinism, does not equal proof that evolution has not occurred. There were evolutionary theories prior to Darwin...most notably from Lamarck - who proposed that animals could develop traits that would be inherited by their offspring; but as science really took off and started to develop, the evidence from the geologic record, biology, the geographic diversity of life discovered through exploration of the rest of the world etc. required an explanation of the natural world that could not be done by a giant flood on a world that had only been around for a few thousand years....and that's how we ended up with evolution, and all that scientists have really been debating for the last hundred years is HOW the process of evolution works...not whether or not it exists. Back to symbiosis; if these wonderful Christians had any real integrity, they would inform the reader more about symbiosis, who came up with it, has it or any part of symbiotic theory been accepted by biologists....but it seems like they don't bother, so I will. Here is an actual review of a book written by the creator of symbiotic theory - Lyn Margulis, that mentions what has been accepted as evidence for the theory - the symbiotic relationship that joined two separate organisms in the eukaryote cell: A visionary scientist with a blind spot Lynn Margulis as a critic of neo-Darwinism All humans have mitochondria in all of our cells. All animals and plants have mitochondria in their cells. It is largely due to Lynn Margulis that the hypothesis that mitochondria were once free-living bacteria, is now considered a proven scientific theory in biology. The symbiotic origin of mitochondria is no longer a controversial theory. So; symbiosis may be able to explain some of the details of the evolutionary process, but not everything. I don't know where the dividing line should be between Margulis's theory, and the modern Neodarwinists like Richard Dawkins - who seems to try to explain everything as competition between selfish genes, but it's more likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle. But one thing that is NOT in the middle, or anywhere near a legitimate explanation for life on Earth is creationism.

Yes, that's true; but there is also anti-Canadian or anti-federalist sentiments among Quebec nationalists. What I was thinking of is that English Canada's identity used to be tied to being part of the British Empire and Commonwealth, and as England progressively declined and Canada's economic and cultural links with America grew -- by the 60's, no one was sure exactly what it means to be a Canadian, except not American. It's worth adding that we haven't even touched on Aboriginal issues yet; especially that it is impossible to discuss what this country is without mentioning that land treaties had to be taken seriously in the early days when Canada had a sparse European population. We didn't have the Indian Wars like the U.S.; it was more of a case of gradually growing in population and economic power, and trying to marginalize the natives....in many places, it still hasn't been resolved. Well, what do you expect? Even if everyone using the board was bilingual, it would make things confusing. I'm sure there are French language forums where you get to write in English. Those could be different people talking. Personally, I don't see the few Canadians who have become pop stars or famous athletes in the U.S. as doing anything for this country. That's true. We usually lump Mexico in with Central and South America, as a totally separate issue.....except for when NAFTA started! The biggest issues in the future won't be cultural; it will be economic and military. The U.S. right now is an empire in decline. But, from what I can gather from environmental and resource trends, the other competing powers like Russia and China, are straining under the same constraints that are occurring because of both renewable and non-renewable resource scarcities. So, they don't have much room, or a whole lot of time to build up their nations and project military power either. Looking further into the future, maybe after our time, a melted Arctic becomes the last place of refuge for millions of people trying to migrate north, as a heating world, warmed by about 6 degrees C, and becomes the last place in the northern hemisphere that's still habitable, as global warming cooks the tropics to a level too hot to sustain plant and animal life. We have a few precedents for this in the planet's long history -- last time likely occurred during the PETM about 55 million years ago. But, we weren't around to have to live through it! I can imagine that at a time like this, which we are doing nothing to prevent from happening, those who are living will have greater things to worry about than Canada - U.S. relations.

I forgot to make note of a feeling I had the last time I came back that things had changed quite a bit from a few years earlier. In particular, when you were running the endless "Ground Zero Mosque" thing back when that was the hot issue, I never mentioned it at the time, but it occurred to me that, even then, it seemed like we had switched sides from where we would have been in 2008. I was doing a lot of the Muslim-bashing back then, and collaborating with DOP and a few others that I am on opposite sides with today on Muslims, and Christians and other religions for that matter! It seemed like you were one of the liberal voices back then, but I wasn't sure.

I can't say that I disagree with a lot of their observations from a cultural and psychological perspective, but it should be noted most of the neurosis is English Canadian, not French Canadian! The Quebecois are very sure about their cultural identity and history....just not so sure about their future. And, I would suspect something similar of the Acadians, Franco-Ontarians, and any other French-speaking populations in the Country. It's English Canada which has been adrift for the last 50 years, wondering and desperately trying to invent a Canadian identity. So far, we've been trying to figure out a way NOT to be American, and combining French and English seems to have something to do with it. The anti-Americanism comes as much from the sense of being drowned out by American pop commercial culture that much of the rest of the world complains about, and the fact that our economy has been mostly focused around providing resources for the U.S., and at least up till now, providing branch plant operations of American corporations. When I was in grade school, our identity was still formed around being the United Empire Loyalists, who gathered in all of the Loyalists from the 13 Colonies who stayed loyal to the British Crown, and rejected the treasonous calls for separation and independence of the Americans. So, even though Canada emerged after WWII as more dependent on the U.S. for trade and commerce than England, it has taken a few decades of wrangling to try to figure out what a Canadian identity is! I'm not sure if we're there yet....and I really don't care that much! There's too much nationalism in the world already. If we're one of the countries where people don't fly the flag much, that's probably a good thing!

And yet, the billionaires who buy the tax breaks they want, the changes to health, environment and safety legislation they desire, and the privatization of government assets and services they would like to take advantage of, and hire the lobbyists to write the model legislation for their bought and payed for politicians to turn into government legislation, don't seem to consider themselves as voting for their own entitlements!

Yes, and it's certainly clear now that the major powers have competing interests that cannot be resolved through cooperation. I am sure that China is not the only oil-importer breaking the embargo; they're just the ones saying so openly. Iran is one of the few countries left in the world with lots of conventional crude oil, so any attempt to blockade them is either going to be broken or lead to a world war.

Who was it said some years back that 'a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth?'

No, but your Government has the option to revoke citizenship of any U.S. citizen joining a foreign military. It's up to the individual to jump through the hoops to keep it if they enlist in a foreign, even an allied military. At least that's what the letters I received told me at the time. At the time, I was stationed in West Germany, and allied or not, there was some degree of animosity towards the Americans, at least below the surface. But we usually channeled any hostilities into outperforming the Americans during group NATO exercises. I was asked a few times why I joined the C.A.F. instead of the U.S., even by our officers, so perhaps my lack of interest in maintaining U.S. citizenship came from feeling the need to show which side I was on over there. But, since this has become the focus of your attention, I'm not sure if my opening statement is correct or not! I think the reason why I felt more North American than Canadian was not because of having dual citizenship for a few years early on in my life. It was more likely from having so many family members across the border, or even because I spent most of my adult life living in a border community (Niagara Falls) and crossing the border two or three times a week. That likely has more to do with it than having a citizenship that I never made much use of. Well; I for one was disappointed with how the Reform Party from out west morphed into the present Conservative Party. Back in the late 80's, when it started under Preston Manning, and had the Triple "E: Senate (equal numbers of senators from each province like the U.S. Senate), I thought they had a valid point....even though I was living in Ontario. I joined the Reform Party when they first tried to start up in Ontario (I think it was in 1990) because the natural governing party of Canada -- the Liberals, seemed to have figured out long ago, that under our Parliamentary system, all a federal government has to do is to control Ontario and Quebec, because there aren't enough seats in Parliament in the West or the East to form a government. Even back then, Preston could see that most potential conservative allies in Ontario, had no interest in sharing power, so the Triple E Senate would not get off the ground. And after a brief interlude with a dunce who was our equivalent of George Bush - Stockwell Day, our Dick Cheney - Stephen Harper, stepped up to become leader of what was being called at the time the "Canadian Alliance Party." Harper had been trying to run the Reform movement behind the scenes and had his chance to step up and make the amalgamation deal with the eastern rump that was left of the old P.C. Party and form the new Conservative Party. By that time, Senate reform was long forgotten; and I think Harper realized long before most of us, that Alberta's true power would come through possessing the most lucrative resource in the country - the Tar Sands. Rather than call for equal representation in government; Harper has relied on collective greed and eastern concerns over continued access to cheap energy to make Alberta the tail that wags the dog in Canadian politics today. I started first with the NDP, but in the early 80's I bought in to the same presumption a lot of people had that the economic malaise of the 70's was due to "big government and taxes", and the economic growth of the 80's was thanks to conservatives applying supply side economic theory. The real story was that it had more to do with oil prices...but I'll leave that for later. I drifted towards the Liberals and then the P.C.s. But now, as a Green Party member who lives in an NDP stronghold, I still would contend that most of what is needed to fix the problems in the world today will have to come from the bottom up....not from the world of politics! So, a lot of times a new topic starts up here, and I read through a few posts and plan a response....and then think "why bother," and go back to what I was doing before. I took a long break from here too....I forget how long I was away....I wasn't banned, I just found myself commenting on issues I wasn't even sure I had settled my opinions on myself, and unable to maintain any consistency. So, I went away....ordered a bunch of ebooks...did some reading....tried a couple of other forums -- one was Religious Forums, which, judging from all of the different sorts of beliefs represented, I thought would be a good place to sort out my own thinking on religious, philosophical - especially metaphysical topics....but found it was usually just opinionated a@#holes arguing with each other about who is right....sort of like what happens when most people accidentally start a conversation on religion in real life. I even tried a small ecology forum to focus on environment issues, but found most of the frequent posters were just interested in advancing their own theories....so I guess this is as good a place as any to park my thoughts!

If you're old enough to remember Chretien, Trudeau and even Mulroney, the answer is self-explanatory. Even past Conservative Prime Ministers like Mulroney -- who had us jump into globalization with both feet, were determined that Canada would chart our own course on foreign policy issues. Some historians even credit Mulroney for being the one who caused the Apartheid regime in South Africa to fall, because he surprised Thatcher and Reagan, who wanted toothless sanctions, and a little reform around the edges. But Reagan and Thatcher were determined that they would treat the ANC as a communist insurgency. The only reason they backed off and let the South African Government fall was because they realized they were standing alone among the community of nations (except for Israel) and decided that continuing support for apartheid would be more trouble than it was worth. Can you picture Stephen Harper doing anything similar under similar circumstances?

Worth noting that the ones who don't want a fight to the death, have mostly packed their bags and returned to the U.S. or elsewhere over the last 30 years. And the majority of those Jews answering the call of Aliya are more inclined to be fanatical deadenders, who will fight it out to the death. Some of those who have left, fought in the IDF and may have been irritated or annoyed by the intermittent calls to report for reserve duty over the years, but from one ex-Israeli I talked to about 10 years ago, what made him leave and bring his family back to Canada was the realization that, as his children were entering their teen years, that they would get called up for military duty, in an endless cycle of violence.

Canadians have more at stake now with what's happening in the U.S. than ever before, now that we have a Prime Minister who is following the path that John Howard forged for Australia a few years back -- in brief, turning this country into a vassal state for U.S. economic policy and foreign policy.

But not all of those reasons for revoking citizenship are due to criminal offenses. If you join a foreign military.....like the Canadian Armed Forces, you lose your U.S. citizenship unless you can successfully repeal it within the stated time limit. I'm not saying that I still ignore Canadian politics (it has gotten more interesting of late, but not for good reasons). And, my lack of interest is not the same thing as lack of knowledge. During my lifetime, I have been a member of five political parties (Green Party three years ago...though I don't do a whole lot), and the last time I worked as a volunteer, was for the P.C.'s when Mike Harris ran for Premier here in Ontario, and then for re-election. So, my political philosophy has changed a lot over the years. Most of it due to what I have seen coming from conservative movements in the U.S., and my disenchantment with right wing ideas. The main reason why I joined these forums was to try to get inspired to take more interest in politics again. At the time I joined, I was still on the right....except for religious and social issues. But, my thinking on a lot of subjects has changed radically over the last five years, and some of the changes have led to view most politics as applying bandaid solutions to systemic, fundamental problems that are either ignored or misunderstood. I would say that federal politics in Canada has got a lot more interesting of late, now that we have our own Machiavelli trying to further entrench himself and his party's control in Ottawa.

I'll cut in here before you get to the part about how the Muslim nations are the only ones who are not peace-loving. Before we get to the part about creating first - the League of Nations, and then the United Nations after WWII, what do you think were the underlying motivations behind those wars? And that will tell us a lot about the likelihood that peace can be maintained by world bodies like the UN, which have no armies to enforce international law, and are essentially toothless! WWI especially, was a war looking for an excuse to get going....long before a lone assassin shot Archduke Ferdinand, and got the ball rolling. There was competition for colonies and the resources they contained, between the established major colonial powers - England and France, and Germany - the rising upstart, trying to make itself the new power in Europe. Up till the outbreak of WWI, England was driving itself into bankruptcy because of the quest to maintain its overwhelming advantage as the dominant naval power in the world, by trying to hold to a policy of building two destroyers or similar warships to every one built by the new German Navy. All of the major players in Europe had been building up for a conflict viewed as inevitable, and wanted to get it over with. And my despair about the state of the World now comes partially from the suspicion that the same thing, or something very similar is occurring today. The world powers today don't have an official policy of colonialization, but the growing scarcity of many essential natural resources is making the system of economic colonization increasingly ruthless. Newly independent former colonies a half century ago, soon found themselves led by dictators installed by the U.S. or England, who took on World Bank and IMF loans...bankrupting their nations on vanity projects that benefited few outside the ruling circles. Over the years, many countries in Africa and South America have had to turn over effective control of their land and resources in the ground to foreign commercial interests. The noose has tightened even further on many, who have had IMF or World Bank - installed advisers put in charge of drafting government budgets and making spending and policy decisions. And, the competition between the major economic powers is equally ruthless today. The U.S. and Russia have been making moves and counter-moves, in the competition for access to oil and gas reserves in Central Asian republics. Modern day regime changes, like in Iraq and Libya, appear to have more to do with whose oil companies control the exploration and development contracts in what are the only oil-producing nations in the world today that still have major reserves of conventional oil that have not been pumped out yet. And, this little story that just popped up on Iran's PressTV website, informs us that China plans to increase oil imports from Iran by 20% in the coming year....sort of flies in the face of the U.S. led attempt to enforce an economic embargo on Iran. China is determined to rebound from their recession of the last year, but they can't do that without securing imports of necessary resource -- especially energy -- coal from Australia, and now, more oil from Iran. We already know that Russia is on Iran's side in this latest buildup to war, but China has had little to say, likely because they may be an economic power, but don't have a gargantuan military like the U.S. in order to play games of gunboat diplomacy. Nevertheless, if China is letting it be known that they are going to continue to disregard the U.S. - led attempts to seal off trade with Iran, this sets the stage for where all of the major players are going to be when a shooting war starts. A war with Iran is not going to be a simple little bombing mission that's over and done with. It will be the next world war because the players have decided that there's not enough advantage in sharing remaining resources, so they want to play winner-take-all.