Knave

The Alliance looks to be a rising star - as you said, they received nearly 10% of the popular vote and won one seat, which isn't a bad start for their first election. In the days of Social Credit, the PCs started out much the same way. Well, the NDP is popular among more left-leaning folks in Edmonton, who (traditionally) vote either NDP or Liberal provincially and Federally. Outside Edmonton, the NDP shows only moderate support (at best) in other urban centres in the province - but is completely unable to garner much support in the rural areas and usually comes up third in Calgary, the largest city. Many Albertans I know say that they need only go to Saskatchewan or B.C. to see the "benefits" of NDP government - heck, there's a lot of Albertans who are from those two provinces and came to Alberta as fallout from the NDP running the governments there. So an NDP majority doesn't seem to be in the cards. The Liberals are about the same - besides the fact that "Liberal" is a dirty word in many rural areas, moreso than the NDP. Many folks simply can't seperate the Provincial from the Federal Liberals, which doesn't entirely work to their favour. Alberta has elected conservative parties to the majority in the Legislature continuously for about 80 years; the UFA, Social Credit, Progressive Conservative. I don't think the "next" party to take up the lead in the Legislature will be a Liberal or NDP one - it's likely to be another conservative party. The Alliance may be it. As my dad said to me once; Albertans don't elect governments - We confirm dynasties.

I'm not so sure. Much of the ISAF force in Afghanistan is made up of non-US troops - including Canadians. The American role there is mostly in 'mopping up' and chasing after the stragglers of al-Queda and the Taliban. Iraq is a different playing field, though. But, as was mentioned before, the US is withdrawing troops from Europe, as well as in East Asia (with reduced committments in Korea and Japan), and that frees up substancial forces for possible rotation through Iraq. A large number of Army and Marine reserve units have still not been activated. Recruiting officers have said that they have noticed a drop in enlistment numbers than, say, the period immediately after 9/11, but they're still well within their quotas and necessary replacement numbers. As I said before, the military itself doesn't see a need for a draft and actually opposes it, because it would lower the overall quality of their troops. I agree that the war in Iraq will be won with boots on the ground, but maintaining a high quality of soldier is necessary, especially in Iraq. And, the quantity of available US troops (Army, Marines and National Guard units) is far larger than what is currently deployed in either of the two countries right now...

The description of this video said that "unarmed" protestors in the Ivory Coast were demonstrating at a French military blockade when apparently the French troops opened fire. The actual shooting in the second video is pretty hard to make out because of the screaming and the cameraman running away from the French security cordon after the first shots are heard fired..... but it looks pretty bad. The footage taken after the shooting shows wounded being tended to; Most of the wounded they show are unarmed. (WARNING: Parts of these videos are pretty gruesome - blood, gore and people laying wounded... so I'd advise discretion, please.) First Video Second Video

Arafat's wife was reported to be considering releasing her husband's medical records, according to the paper I read the other day. There were rumours circulating for a while that Arafat might have been homosexual and\or had AIDS.... but they were, unsubstanciated, as was mentioned earlier. If I'm not mistaken, a low white cell count is also a symptom of being HIV-positive, so I think that only fuels the allegations and speculation.

Putin's move to control the ogliarchs and their involvement in politics (YUKOS and that bunch) shows that he and his cadre are steadily consolidating his hold on the country and trying to quash the largest threat to their continuing reign in office. Khodorkovsky apparently received the ire of the Kremlin when he made statements about Russia's future being in the "development of a free market and civil society," as well as his contributions to political parties. Not just any political party, but nearly all of them, including the Communists. His motions after to directly appoint regional governors from the Kremlin rather than have them elected by constituents - as fallout from the Beslan school massacre - is another alarming turn and a show of lip service to democratic principles by Putin....

That was Rangel's (D-NY) mode of thinking when he proposed the latest draft bill, that was defeated (402-2) shortly before the US Prez election. He ended up voting against his own bill. Many people pointed to Rangel's bill and said it was an attempt by Bush to reinstate the draft - when in fact it was a bill proposed by a group of Democrats. Some were pretty slow correcting the error. Honestly, the US military opposes a draft. They have an all-volunteer force which is the best-trained and equipped in the world, and has, overall, a high level of morale amongst its troops. Introducing a bunch of college-age kids who don't want to be there would be poisonous to the troops' morale and would ultimately undermine their mission, and likely get more of them killed in the process. See: Vietnam.

I agree. Actually, for the Alliance it was closer to 10% - about 77,000 ballots overall.... a decent result for their first election. They finished not too terribly far behind the NDP, who received about 90,000 votes across the Province. Hopefully next election the Alliance can put someone on for the televised debates, since they were barred from the Global TV debate this year - for not having a sitting MLA last election.... which was before they were even founded. Alas, someone probably forgot to point out that the NDP was allowed in the 1997 televised debate even though they didn't have any MLAs at the time, either.