LBloom

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/26/blair-htichens-religion.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.0692335:b39861710 Atheist Christopher Hitchens debated born again (more than once) Christian Tony Blair about religion and came out the winner in Toronto last night. This link http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/26/religion-good-evil-poll-hitchens-blair.html ...is to a CBC article that shows Canadians along with Australians, the French, the Scandahoovians and a whole lot of lefty liberals don't believe in god. Of course the Yanks, and the Saudis still do.... Interesting to see that the Brits do not LOL.

What an unfortunate thread. Apparently started by a pro-Israel poster who would like nothing more than responses that deprecate the Palestinians and make them out to be incapable of self-government, not that they have ever had the chance. Start with 600 years under the Turks, during which the Ottomans pretty much drained every resource from the region and gave nothing back. Everybody who lived in the region was kept poor, subjugated and ignorant. The Turks only introduced a land registry so they could get a record of residents who could be called up for military service. Following the First World War, Balfour, and Versailles, educated Jewish Zionists with connections and resources come in and establish their homeland. There is no more telling feature of the times than the fact that the British disarmed both the Jews and the Arabs in 1939 and only the Jews had the resources to re-arm following the Second World War when the Czech munitions factories no longer could count on Nazi business. Of course they used those munitions to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs into refugee camps in other countries - countries which themselves were only nascent, as well as to drive the British themselves out. To presume some standard on these people when they have never had a chance in the first place is hardly kosher, neh?

Interesting how far astray this thread has gone. An important part of this story is that the change was going to sneak in under the radar until the opposition suddenly discovered what was, until that point, an unannounced change to the GIS that would affect the poorest of the elderly. Suddenly Diane Findlay was announcing that it would be "studied". An important facet of this issue is that the people who receive GIS are already below the poverty line. If they try to scrape together a little extra by withdrawing from their legitimate retirement savings at a rate higher than the minimum allowed, say to deal with an unforeseen emergency (seniors often are faced with just such things for needs related to health care, funerals, changes in living circumstances) they will have their GIS reduced. This was an extraordinarily cruel change to the GIS system - seniors would be faced with a choice of dealing with a real life emergency and poverty later on. Consider a senior who withdraws more than the minimum to bury a life partner only to find that their GIS has been reduced to the point that they cannot afford to pay their electric bill. No matter how open a mind you may try to keep, this does not reflect well on the government that tried to smuggle this through without letting anybody know what was coming.