Lumpy

A quick clarification here: Alexander did indeed conquer Bactria (Afghanistan), and it remained under Macedonian/Greek rule for roughly two centuries. Alexander's conquest is a bad example for making this point - to stress this further, look into the origins of the name "Kandahar". I dislike the argument that Afghanistan "cannot possibly be pacified because no one has ever succeeded in doing so", because there are in fact many examples of Afghanistan being successfully conquered (Macedonian, Persian, Umayyad, and Timurid Mongol off the top of my head). Of course we have examples of failed attempted conquests/occupations - but this is little different from many other polities that have ever fought wars on their own territory. I'm not trying to say that the current NATO mission cannot fail. Things aren't looking good at present. However, contrary to popular belief, there's no historical precedent saying that it will fail. The notion that Afghanistan is unbeaten and unbeatable is false.

Isn't it? I always thought the NDP was open about their socialist leanings - or is this coming down to semantics? I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm interested in your answer.

Is it really? Socialism may not always fail, but I'm pretty sure Venezuela is not a good example of where it has succeeded.

Of course there can be other factors in other regions, and that's related to my point. Alberta does not equal Alabama. People here have their own unique reasons for disliking the Liberal brand, and in this case I don't think it has much to do with the demographic sources being cited.

Agreed, it's economics more than anything. The sentiment on the street is such that you really don't hear much coffee shop chatter about gay marriage and other social conservative hot-button issues, but you do hear talk (and much of it) about the Liberals wanting to shut down the oilpatch or "steal our money to give to Quebec".

I'm not sure if these reasons stand up. Ontario and Quebec are only 16% and 5% nonreligious, and yet are generally perceived to be more liberal than Alberta. These numbers were from the Wikipedia (and thus not necessarily from the same study), so I checked out Statistics Canada - the 2001 census numbers on religion back this up (10 years old, but they seem to only account for religion every second census): Albertans are less likely to be religious than Canadians from any other province except British Columbia, and not insignificantly so. In terms of urban population, according to the 2006 census roughly 64% of the province's population lives in either Metro Calgary or Metro Edmonton: a much greater ratio living in a large urban center than, say, New Brunswick, which is also perceived to be more liberal. I don't know what evidence there is that correlates being English and/or white with being conservative, but even if true there is a significantly larger proportion of visible minorities in Alberta than in the Maritimes - and I'd wager a larger proportion of non-English speakers goes along with that. Personally I don't think demographics has so much to do with it. I do think people in Alberta are suspicious of the Liberal party's motives, especially given their history. It's easy for one to say that the NEP is ancient history, but there are plenty of people in the province who remember it and are very vocal about it. It's hard to blame them, since many people lost jobs and businesses because of it. The NEP has become almost legendary here, whether a person feels that's justified or not. Chretien's Liberals didn't help as they played the different regions against each other (very successfully) - and Alberta always seemed to be the "bad guy". This led people here to feel that the province was not respected, and reinforced the notion that the Liberal party could not be trusted. A lot of people in Alberta fear the Liberals and what they may do (again) to the provincial economy. It's easy to assume that the province is conservative because it's supposedly full of white religious nutjobs, but I think the real explanation comes down to economics and history.

There are several cartoonists that have been threatened by Islamic radicals. One is indeed Swedish: Lars Vilks. I'd laugh at how ridiculous it is to target cartoonists (and their countries) if it weren't such a sad reality.

Nothing to stop them at all, so long as they abide by forum rules. But that's not what appears to be happening on cbc.ca; the site doesn't seem to have a lot of conservative posters, quite probably because they are drawn to alternate forums.

I've had similar experiences visiting cbc.ca... the vitriol in the comments (often anti-Harper like you say) can be shocking. I'm not CBC's biggest fan, but I do visit their site fairly regularly to get their take on the news. I find them to be less biased now than I remembered them to be when I swore them off more than a decade ago, but they are more left leaning than other mainstream Canadian media. Is it simply a case of the anti-Harper crowd being attracted to the mainstream site that most closely represents their opinion? Perhaps it's a result of a more obvious left-wing bias that existed in the past (which could be just my own perception) resulting in a more fringe group of posters being attracted to the site. A similar point is there seems to be an army of pro-Iranian posters who pipe up on cbc.ca at the first sight of any news story presenting the Iranian regime in a bad light. The response can be strong enough that I've sometimes wondered if it's organized. Could the anti-harper comments be similar? I'm not a conspiracy junkie and I'm somewhat uncomfortable making the suggestion, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that left-wing organizations could be flooding the site for propaganda reasons. No matter what the cause, I don't think that the comments are indicative of the feelings of most Canadians. At least I hope not.

Wow, this goes beyond even Hugo's standard bluster. Of course he's got no *evidence* or anything, but that never stopped him before. So now according to him the US is not only occupying Haiti, but the pretext for said occupation was their doing. Oh, how diabolical! I was kind of curious to see who got the blame for this one first: America or "the Zionists". Someone was bound to point the crazy finger at one of them sooner or later. Something else occurred to me: if in some fantasy world the US was really mighty enough to harness the power of earthquakes, then Chavez would be wise to keep his mouth shut.

Really? Let's check Statistics Canada and do some division: Alberta: Population 3,703,979 Seats in the HoC: 28 Population/seat: 132,288 Ontario: Population 13,119,251 Seats in the HoC: 106 Population/seat: 123,766.5 Canada: Population 33,873,357 Seats in the HoC: 308 Population/seat: 109,978.4 Doesn't look like over-representation from here.