I agree, quite refreshing rkewen. But then it was certainly a month with lots of good props to haul out onto the stage.

It is also refreshing to read this morning that our Miss Globes got booed at the Junos in Halifax when she tried, not once, but twice to score points with her anti-sealing jokes that went flat with an audience proably more attuned to the sealing issue than Pamela will ever be.

It also nice to see that David Emerson continues to be a household word across much of Canada a day after some 500 of his constituents once again urged the former Liberal to run for office one more time and to do it now.

I have rarely felt ashamed to be a Canadian but the seal hunt issue created an exception.
I'm gonna have to put an armenian flag on my back-back.
Re emer$on what's the big deal about the so-called "gate-way" project?
It's all about a bunch of SLEAZY multi-national corporations, that own our government, shipping non-renewable resorces to china for cheap processing by slave labor!!
Then, when finished, said non-renewable resources can be shipped back to your local slave-labor product outlet walmart!!! So the corporate elite line their pockets, we all lose our middle-class jobs (see delphi for instance), our natural landscapes are raped, and the most BRUTAL, despotic regime in the entire world is given a defacto seal of approval by our complicit governments trade approval.(inspite of cynical, superficial protestations about human rights)
Oh yeah - the coup de gras: the 3 billion it costs - we get to pay for it!!!!
Whooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When looking at the thumb you just hit with a hammer,it is never funny.

But a couple of weeks later it's a real gas !

YEAH! SURE...

Might want be careful where you travel in the ME with that flag, mind you Armenian woman are generally very good looking.

As for the article, doesn't even make good toilet paper.

No Colin,

Your comment doesn't make good toilet paper!!

Ha ha ! that was soooo easy. let me see if I can figure out another way to insult you without adding anything to this discussion.

..Oh I know... used toilet paper. Not worth it. Get it? hahahahahha....

sigh.

:(

Let's face it, Brokeback Mountain was borrrrrr-ing. Breakfast on Pluto, now that was a scream, but way too good for Hollywood.

jesterjoger, my real shame as a Canadian came yesterday when I read what Miss Globes' attempted to pull off.

That anyone would be so dumb as to head to a maritimes port city to publicly dump on sealers says more about the jerks at CTV who brought the blonde dipstick into focus than anything.

Can you say greed? Pam Anderson was hired to host so CTV could flog the Junos show to the US marketplace. She is American contact, plain and simple.

If that's being too critical of the company that brings us so much of our American culture I'll take it back as simply suggest whoever hired here must have been blinded by her headlights.

However, the embarrassment was short lived when I learned the audience essentially gave her a polite raspberry.

Personally though, if you are travelling anywhere in the middle-east you might be wise to continue hiding the maple leaf, which now stands out as a sign of a pro-American, pro-Israeli nation that has abandoned its long standing tradition of neutrality in what are essentially tribal and religious disputes.

er, I meant "American content" in para 3.

Mary Jane
Technical, none of them do. Poop just doesn’t stick to binary code.

The article is atypical of journalism today, sort of a form of space filler, but less useful than bondo.

Allan
If I remember correctly, Canada is one of the first countries to recognize Israel and it’s right exist. Now I suppose we are to finance a group that has as a key part of it’s Charter, the total annihilation of Israel and every Jew in the area? I have no problem helping everyday Palestinians survive, but paying for Hamas to encourage genocide is not ok. I am sure all those wonderfully supportive Muslim countries that like to say how much they support the Palestinians will coming riding to the rescue of Hamas.

Colin, I think you might review your memory on that issue.

I will admit Canada was (embarrassingly) the first country to join in Israel's new campaign to shut down international financial support to the democratically elected Palistinian government.

It must also be noted that Canada was among the loudest voices demanding that Palestinians hold free and democratic elections to ensure the will of the people was followed.

Obviously the rights of the Palestinian citizens to free elections is seen as far less important, by our government, than the right of another foreign power to interfere.

And as for genocide, I'd suggest you look at the record a little more closely. It was the Palestinians who have been thrown off their lands, walled off and treated as less than human.

If Canada is going to start taking a stance on what Hamas may or may not do, when will it start to take a stand on what the US does do, as done and will likely continue doing?

Ditto on China and a whole pack of unsavory regimes that Canadian politicians have fawned over in recent decades.

Perhaps you remember the RCMP busting heads and spraying mace and worse into the eyes of UBC students who objected to the presence of a visious dictator at an Asia-Pacific conference held at UBC a few years ago.

Cut off aid?

Hell no! We just increased trade with them and looked the other way as citizens were tortured and killed and democracy was trodded on.

And while we are on this topic, why is it that Irish immigrants to Canada who happened to speak out about the illegal actions of British military and government agents in Ireland, often got a rude knock on their doors by Canadian police?

Yet pro-Isrealis in Canada can pretty much advocate the elimination by any means of anyone in Palistine who opposes Israel's presence and or its treatment of individual Palistinians?

Allan
No one has stopped them from voting for Hamas, but they knew what the world has said prior to the election about Hamas’s policy. Would Hamas have been elected if they had a 3rd choice, hard to say. Canada is not trying to stop other nations from giving them money, so Hamas is free to get funding from countries that share their ideologues. Hamas now must decide if they wish to be fighters or bureaucrats. They might find that running the day to day tasks of government not as interesting as sending some young kid off to kill people with a vest bomb.

The Palestinians make sure they don’t succeed. The IDF never used to conduct body searches on woman until the terrorist decided to exploit this weakness, same with kids, now the IDF searches everyone. The PA and Israel agree to pass goods through one port, the Terrorist use it to send bombs through, it gets closed and the Palestinians suffer. See the pattern, anything that approaches normalcy is a threat to people that want to have a revolt/insurgency. If the Pals start have a somewhat normal life, how many do think will want to strap bombs to themselves or to have their backyards used to launch rockets. The misery they live in is useful to the terrorist groups and to the other Arab Governments, that’s why nothing gets done.

Colin, that last comment of yours is utter tripe, something I would expect an Israeli fanatic would come up with as a means of denying any responsibility for the past 50 years of illegal occupation.

Perhaps the Europeans and Americans who created this nightmare when they sought an easy solution to the troubles of European Jewry ought to come clean.

While some Euros might, the US is far too entrenched in pro-Israeli positions to ever offer a fair hand to Palestine.

Certainly the surrounding Arab states, themselves victims to the same regime and map changes of the earlier part of the past century are not the first to owe an ounce of responsibility on that score.

Are you suggesting it be left to fester as a racial mess with Arabs responsible to help the Palestinians?

The middle-east didn't suddenly pop into existence in 1949.

Canada has essentially caved to a Montreal lobby of powerful Jews whose ties and loyalty to a foreign country raise a very big question about their own Canadian citizenship in my opinion.

If any other ethnic group took such an active part in a foreign dispute they would be under continuous pressure to back off.

Why the double standard?

Allan
If the Arabs had won in 48, you would bemoaning the plight of the homeless Jews forced to roam the world. If the Arabs had won, they would have been far more ruthless than the Israelis ever had been.

But the Israelis won and have paid for the land in blood. The Palestinians have lost, brutal but true. What is really horrible is that well meaning people like yourself and the Arab governments are keeping their false hopes alive. Israel is not going anywhere (at least not without a major war that will cost the lives of many of the people their on both sides) the “Right of return” is not going to happen, keeping these hopes alive is downright cruel. They lost the battle, now they need to grieve, pick up the pieces and rebuild. They need to give up the “death cult” mentality and work towards a future that offers them something. Arab governments like having the Palestinian/Israeli issue to kick around because it acts like a soap opera distracting their own people from dealing with their internal issues.

Since this is such a Moral issue with you, are you going to march down to the local native band and hand the deed to your home? Since you are one of the occupiers of First Nation land, there is little difference between you and the Israelis you despise so much.

Colin, I don't despise Israelis. I do despise people who crush others and then try to justify it by using 2,000 year old teachings as the rational.

The land I live on is not sought by any native bands in BC.

That I know for certain.

But I have worked in my own way to ensure that at least some land that definitely was taken from native bands locally have been returned despite the best prolonged resistance of the local establishment and the latter includes virtually every level of government, even some not even directly involved in the issue.

Yes, it very much is a moral issue and I have often spoke out against the continued stance by various Canadian governments and Canadians in general that the Indians don't have any right to anything more than a plot of reserve land.

That incidently is about what the Palestinians have ended up with too, although they also have to deal with a beligerant neighbour who thinks nothing of lobbing a missile into homes of innocents simply as a reminder that big bro is watching.

Sure there are suicide bombers who attempt to blow themsleves up in pizza parlours and other locations in Tel Aviv and other locations.

If Canada's first nations were treated as Palestinians are by many Israelis would anticipate suicide bombers on the loose here as well.

When you grow up in a community where hope is a cruel joke, life loses much of it's lusture. Sadly we don't have suicide bombers among our destitute first nations and Inuit, but we certainly have one hell of a lot of suicides.

I suppose I could be crass and say we are just lucky.

Sure Israelis fear the suicide bombers just as Americans now fear the Arab bomber. Each have brought it on themselves by their terrible behaviour of those who didn't have the means to stand up to them.

Your suggestion that the Palestinians simply get used to it sounds like what the US old slave plantation owners might have told their charges when they grumbled about the unfairness of life.

I suspect a few well meaning Germans likely offered the same advice to Jews in the early 1940s as things were getting rather unpleasant.

Get used to it. I'd suggest to you the arrogance of those words are enough to launch a lot of response anywhere the human heart still beats.