ReeferMadness

That's true but not really relevant. Science has played almost no role so far in the election. Hardly anyone cares. Most people are simply oblivious to just how great the gap between the policies of the main parties and what scientists say is acceptable. It's crazy.

Ummm.... just about anyone who follows what David Suzuki has been saying? I get it. You Harper supporters think that anyone who doesn't support him is on one big team (the "left"). I don't think Suzuki has ever been in league with Trudeau and I would say that if Trudeau really though Suzuki was going to endorse him, he didn't know Suzuki very well either. You don't seem to get it. Suzuki is a scientist and sees the way that scientists see them, not the way politicians see them. Suzuki says that in order to to keep our climate to within 2 degrees of warming, 80% of the known fossil fuels will need to stay in the ground. When Linda McQuaig said that most of the tar sands couldn't be produced, she was simply stating the scientific position. So, from Suzuki's standpoint, Trudeau and Harper are much closer from an environmental policy perspective than Trudeau and Suzuki would be. And that's why I'm completely unsurprised to hear Suzuki tell Trudeau he's out to lunch.

I'm uncomfortable with the niqab because I worry that it is a symbol of partriarchy and oppression. However, I don't support laws against it or the denial of government services. The law is a blunt instrument and not everything can or should be legislated. Ultimately, it is the individual woman's choice whether or not to wear it and she needs to freely decide whether she is being oppressed or not. If the concern is that she is so oppressed she is unable to freely decide, there is a much bigger problem than just the niqab. The SCC was correct in ruling that as long as she uncovers her face to allow identification (which can be done in private), that should suffice.

That is patent nonsense. This is, as Derek admitted, cheap, pandering, wedge politics intended to separate himself from other parties and distract voters from the many, many unattractive and downright repugnant aspects of this government. Think of it as cheap perfume thrown on a skunk.

Because religious leaders (mostly in the USA) who have religious views that come from a similar religious point of view have a habit of saying things that are positively scary. Fundamentalists believe that the end-times battle will start in Israel. If we have a PM with that point of view, we have a right to know. He's done plenty of things wrong. Those things have been documented in other threads - you can go look them up. So, my views are informed by science. I know that's a scary thing to Harper and, apparently, to you. Were I a politician, I would be happy to discuss how my views relate to science and how it would inform my policy. I don't think it's asking to much for our imperious leader to discuss how his views are informed. Ooooohhhh. Poor Harper. Everyone picks on him. First, that's not true. I knew that Chretien was a practicing Catholic and for me to know it, it must have been discussed in the news. I recall it being discussed that Chretien was personally opposed to abortion but he wouldn't let that interfere with his governments policies. But more to the point, I know a few things about Catholics. They don't take literalist, fundamentalist views on the bible and how the world is expected to end. So your comparison is, unsurprisingly, shallow and specious. Thanks for playing.

Is this statement the ultimate straw dog statement? Has anyone ever (even inside the Liberal Party) called Trudeau an environmental idol????? You present this as if it's some kind of news. Anyone who has remotely followed Suzuki will understand he has little time for partisan politics and will say what he thinks. And my understanding is that he thinks that mainstream economic beliefs which rely on unending economic growth will kill the planet. The Greens would certainly be more in line with Suzuki's ideas than either the Liberals or the NDP. However, to my knowledge, Suzuki has not endorsed any party. I don't want to speak for Suzuki, but here's my understanding. Mainstream though (including the large parties, mainstream media, economists, etc) has a tendency to portray the environmental values as tradeoffs where we have jobs and the economy on one side and the environment on the other. In many cases, the environmental casualties are plants or animals for which people have little sympathy (sea stars, lichens, spiders, bats). There is no obvious linkage between the well-being of those species and the well-being of humans. People who are in favour of continued industrial scale development often describe the impact of humans on the earth as insignificant; or make ridiculous analogies (e.g. since CO2 occurs naturally and is required by plants, it's OK for us to triple or quadruple or quintuple the concentrations without adverse impacts). Suzuki sees the biosphere as a delicate web of interconnected life (which affects and is affected by non-living entities). And humans are part of the web. Disrupting anything in the web has a ripple effect that makes its way through the web, though it sometimes takes years or even decades to do so. So, it's not a tradeoff between the environment and the economy. A healthy environment and biodiversity is essential for the wellbeing of all life, us included. So, we need to find ways to co-exist with the environment. And burning all if the fossil fuels wont cut it.

Really. Harper's church espouses "dispensationalism" which (as I understand it) teaches that Israel has to remain in the holy land so that Jesus will return to Earth and fight the final battle between good and evil. Whether Harper's personal beliefs are driven by this fundamentalist biblical interpretation remain unknown because he refuses to discuss it. But it's interesting that he has committed Canada to a sudden policy term with respect to Israel. And whether Harper personally believes it, he is beholden to a base who do. Care to tell me why Chretien's religious beliefs bother you and how they stack up?

Sure. Because you say so.

The analysis on Harper suggests that his views are much more conservative than his governance. He's taken a more moderate stance and clamped down on the more extreme elements in his party to ensure he stays in power. This is a guy who has a long history of denigrating Canada (he once called it a second tier socialistic country). Here is a quote on immigrants. What he has said about Canada in his past should have made him unelectable. That he is not only elected but Prime Minister says much about Canadians - and none of it good. Make no mistake. This guy is a tea party conservative with a Christian evangelist background. The big difference between Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper is that Harper has been better at keeping his religious views to himself.

I know it's less catchy but a better title for this thread might be

But apparently, there is unlimited money to go after charities.

Assuming there is any intelligence in the "us vs them" question (which I don't), a better question might be "Whose side is Saudi Arabia on?" It's a repressive theocratic dictatorship that has puritanical Wahabbi sect schools. Most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. There are persistent reports that 911 funding came out of Saudi Arabia. ISIS is a Sunni movement and Sauds are Sunni as well. Are we really to believe that there is no support for ISIS coming from Saudi Arabia?

You're right. Give up. There's really no point in getting out of bed.

You don't care but you keep arguing anyway. Bored?

whatever.

You're playing games and quite frankly, it gets a bit tiring after a while. The Libertarians got 6,000 votes last election, less than the Marxist Leninist Party. That's roughly 1% of what the Greens got.

You and CF are missing the point. Individually, one spoiled ballot doesn't count, the same as one vote for a candidate doesn't count. Collectively, a lot of spoiled ballots will be noticed, the same as a lot of votes for a candidate will elect someone. If enough people go and spoil ballots, it will send a message. If they stay home, the message that will be sent is they don't care.

Because most people either don't understand or don't care for democracy. They see an election like a hockey game. Somebody wins and somebody loses. Then they all go away and talk about it until the next hockey game. And since May doesn't have a realistic chance of winning the game, they've decided she doesn't count. In some countries, people expect that parliament makes decisions, not the PM and the PMO. They expect parties to be able to collaborate and compromise. But judging from the discussion on MLW, nobody really cares about democracy anymore. And judging from leaders comments, only May and the Green Party really want to engage in a democratic government. I was on Youtube and stumbled on this interview with candidate Mary Lou Babineau. Articulate, positive, engaging, intelligent. Answers questions directly. Wouldn't it be great if we could get some of that in the HoC. ETA: at one point in the interview, Dennis asks her if she were to sum up the Greens in one word, what would it be? He expects her to answer environment but instead her answer was "democracy". Love it.

That's not necessarily true. It's all in the numbers. If a sufficient number of people spoil their votes (particularly if they organize and do it in a consistent fashion), someone will recognize it and do something about it. If all the non-voters voted the same way, they would easily come in first.

I think that if you really can't support a candidate in good conscience, spoiling your vote is a perfectly valid option.

There's no conflict - that's my point. May is there to represent a unique point of view that she brings, and that point of view is representative of something in the neighborhood (according to the polls) of 6% of the population. So, she's there to represent a point of view, not just as someone who might "run the country".

Again with "runs the country". It's no wonder we don't have democracy in Canada - nobody would recognize it. The point of representative democracy is to represent the people. Not "run the country".

Almost as sad as someone from "down south" who gets his kicks hanging around an American discussion forum looking for mentions of the USA.

I think they should.

I don't have time to respond to all of this point by point. I will say this: It's been almost 15 years since the attack on Afghanistan. The Taliban is still there. Al Qaeda is still there. Islam extremists don't seem to be diminished a bit. We've been fighting this almost 3 times as long as WWII. Sooner or later, you need to admit that what you're doing isn't working and it's making things worse. And history didn't begin September 11, 2001. The countries that are in the worst shape are not surprisingly in regions that have been batted around like pawns by the the US, the USSR, Britain and other powers. International politics is a cesspool of hypocrisy. The situation in Syria is now truly bizarre. We have a situation where we want both major combatants (Assad and ISIS) to lose. And it seems most people want the resulting refugees just to go away. The solutions will need to come from the local people. If we really want to help, we need to find a way to make that happen.