Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (9216)	4/13/2006 1:13:26 AM
From: SofaSpud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37273

How about astonishment? But seriously, Canada was involved with the Manhattan project, we certainly had the capability in 1945 to build a bomb, but chose not to. I suppose the U.S. would make noises about the non-proliferation treaty, but I don't really think too many sphincters would tighten.

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (9216)	8/4/2006 2:43:55 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37273

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rightly chosen democracy over terror in the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict. He is not seeking the short-lived popularity enjoyed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 when he chose to negotiate with Adolf Hitler and sacrificed Czechoslovakia for “Peace in our time”. That contrived “peace” gave the Nazis the time, opportunity and tacit approval to grow to a near-unstoppable force that resulted, by the end of World War II, in 45 million dead and Europe in ruins. In today’s terms, Prime Minister Harper recognizes that sacrificing Israel to the demands of a fascist enemy will not bring peace. Just as Hitler peddled his self-inflicted and self-serving grievances to gullible Western leaders and peace activists while pursuing his well-publicized charter, so too will Hamas and Hezbollah. And they will be further emboldened by the apparent weakness of today’s gullible Westerners. In contrast to Prime Minister Harper’s moral clarity, we now hear former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence, Bill Graham, tell the Guardian newspaper on July 18, "Mr. Harper is proud of the fact he wasn't nuanced … Nuance has kept us in a position where we could help.” Nuance? Does Mr. Graham actually believe that nuance will curb the homicidal ambitions of an organization that has amassed over 10,000 missiles and sent 1,500 of those missiles packed with flesh-shredding ball bearings into Israel, and done so from positions within densely populated Lebanese cities and towns? Does he believe that nuance is an effective weapon against an organization that is the heavily financed and armed proxy of Iran, whose president has called for the nuclear annihilation of Israel? It would be laughable were it not for the slaughter of innocents and the threat to Canada that flows from Mr. Graham’s deadly naiveté. Mr. Graham actually believes that Israel should negotiate with an organization that his own government has designated as a terrorist entity. He is telling Israel that she must deal with Hezbollah, whose opening demand is the release of hundreds of prisoners with Israeli blood on their hands, starting with Samir Kuntar, a Palestinian whose gang kidnapped 4-year-old Israeli Anat Hanan and his father, and took them to Gaza where they smashed in the head of the child in front of his father before shooting the man to death. For this atrocity, Kuntar is a Hezbollah hero. It is Prime Minister Harper, not Bill Graham, who is the honest broker, for honesty demands that we not be impartial between the fireman and the arsonist, to paraphrase Winston Churchill. Canada and other UN members pressured Israel to give up “land for peace” in Lebanon and Gaza, land that was originally secured by Israel as a result of its being used for terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Now that “land for peace” has proven to be “land for war”, surely we at least have the obligation to allow Israel to defend herself against the blood-soaked consequences of our own failed policies. Prime Minister Harper has recognized that the Middle East is not a distant regional conflict, but a struggle for the existence of Israel against the same enemy that may have recently been thwarted in our own backyard from slaughtering thousands in Canada. Israel faces the same enemy that has massacred innocents in Mumbai, Kashmir, London, Madrid, New York, Philippines, Bali, Thailand, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Russia and countless other places around the world. The Middle East is not a regional conflict. It is a global conflict – our conflict -- and “nuance” will not defeat this enemy any more than “nuance” defeated Hitler. The people of Lebanon are suffering horribly. Their nation – once described as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” – has again been shattered by Islamist extremism. As one young Lebanese evacuee told the New York Times on July 27, “Hezbollah came to [our town] Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets … They are shooting from between our houses … Please write that in your newspaper.” Sixty innocent Lebanese were killed when Israel returned fire on a Hezbollah launch site deliberately and cruelly located in the village of Qana, about which Human Rights Watch said, “The use of human shields [by Hezbollah] is a war crime.” The Cedars Revolution of Lebanon issued a press release on July 30 entitled, “Hezbollah is responsible for the massacre.” Were Hezbollah not using women and children as human shields to protect their fighters and weapons while they launch missiles into Israel, not a single Lebanese would have been harmed by Israel’s defensive actions. Prime Minister Harper is the first Canadian Prime Minister in many years to “get it” – to understand that being an honest broker requires a leader who has the moral clarity to distinguish between democracy and terror, between those who wish to live in peace and those committed to their destruction. Like Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Harper is a leader who will be judged, not by transient blips in popularity, but in the fullness of history. I stand behind the Prime Minister in his support for defeating, not accommodating, the fascist death cult that is tearing apart our world.