Buckdog

"When fundamental religious beliefs become public policy, lunacy reigns."

Which is where your moral equivalancy argument falls apart.

Taliban == gov't at the time. Destruction on record. Lots of official notice, UN appeal, etc.

Inuit == suspected, unproven, if so then it most certainly wasn't public policy.

I'm not arguing that zealotry in gov't isn't bad, I'm just saying that you only have one example of that.

Cheers,
lance

Ahh ... George Bush has a 'Rapture Contingency Plan' for the White House in case he is taken up.

"God talks to me" ... George Bush.

You don't have to look too far to find religious lunacy in power in places you should least expect it.

And near the bottom of the page:

Kangiqsujuaq’s mayor, Mary Pilurtuut, said she hadn’t been informed of fresh damage at the site and doubted “something religious” would have been involved.

“Recently, it’s not the case,” she said, suggesting that most of the deterioration at the site has been “caused by nature.”

Lance, thanks for the point. I elaborated a bit to show my concern - 'equivalancy'?? I don't believe that equivalancy is a necessary measuring stick.

I consider this different degrees of similar substance.

Well ... the mayor has to be concerned with community image! - I put quite a lot of weight on the observations of the scientific professionals.

For once I actually agree in principle, religion has no place in public policy.

There are good historical reasons for the seperation of church and state.

And this is why the biggest problem in the world today is the convert or die policy of Islamic Totalitarianism.

After all you wouldn't want a bunch of religious minded gentlemen going around telling women what to wear in public right?

Oops, spoke to soon,look whats on the newswires today.

Police warn 64,000 Tehran women for slack dressing Mon Aug 28, 6:42 AM ET

Iranian police have handed warnings to some 64,000 "badly veiled" women in Tehran during a month-long summer crackdown on un-Islamic dressing, press reports have quoted a police spokesman.

"Over the past month, 63,963 Tehrani women have received warnings... and some have made a written pledge (to dress properly)," Mohammad Reza Alipour from the capital's police force said.

Every post-pubescent woman in the Islamic republic is required to cover her hair and body in public, and crackdowns on un-Islamic dressers are common in summer when many women opt for cooler short, bright coats and Capri pants.

Religious and traditional women wear the chador -- literally meaning "tent" -- which is an enveloping black head-to-toe cover.

A large number of women in Tehran and other big cities have been pushing the boundaries in recent years by sporting skimpy head scarves that barely cover their hair and sandals showing off painted toe-nails.

-Oh well, as long as its not Bush giving the orders it must be okay.-

Every morning I get up and check the news to see if Bush has been taken up in the Rapture'!

http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2004/
11/white_house_exp.html

Wow , two for two. I am also in favour of a womens right to choose. Goes with that whole personal responsibility thing I'm big on.

Now that I think about it we're three for three.

Your recent use of the comment moderation feature shows that you are a believer in intellectual and property rights. That the Buckdog website is yours, to do with as you please, that it is not in fact public property.

Keep this up and your going to get a rep for being a radical conservative pup.

But back to religion and policy, who was it on March 22, 1998 that buried alive 18-year-old Abdul Sami and a 22-year-old named Bismillah beside a mud wall that was bulldozed upon them—inside a stadium?

I'll give you a hint it doesn't start with W it starts with T (for Taliban)

This was in the Afghan city of Herat.

The gruesome public execution was the young men's sentence, under Taliban law, of having been found guilty of engaging in sodomy. They were hardly the first to receive that kind of punishment for same-sex sexual transgressions: Just a month earlier three men found guilty of the same infraction had a stone wall collapsed on them in public just outside the city of Kandahar.

But I suppose opposition to the legal status of Gay marriage is where the real human rights problem is.

comment moderation has gone up when I hit the hay to try and prevent the chickencrap profanity that gets planted here by a very sick little right wing mental case - usually about 3:00 to 3:30 am. I have already contacted the individuals Internet Provider.
-------------
Back to your point. The Taliban are bad. I agree. They are totalitarian religious extremists. I do not disagree. Now come back over to civilized North America.

I continue to stress my concern that Bush's bizarre religious beliefs require our vigilance and scrutiny to ensure that we don't start on a slippery slope that will ultimately end in fundamental christians enforcing their religious ideology as law in the USA.
You always go directly to the extreme and hence I consider your examples to border on 'extreme'. What I want to see from Sussex Drive and the White House is logical response to the insane reality of the middle east. Fanning flames of counter insanity is not helping.

I am flattered that you get up so early in the morning and have Buckdog on your mind for a first thing in the morning posting. Flattered, I tell you!!

I am flattered that you spend so much time here every evening. Flattered, I say!!

Postscript:
Here is a Baptist church site from the USA that wants to do the same as the Taliban example you just used. They are demanding the the US Government institute the death penalty for anyone who is gay.

http://www.godhatesfags.com/

The difference between these Baptists and the Taliban is a matter of 'degree' not 'substance'. Both are completely INSANE.

The difference is that these Baptists you speak of are all talk and no one in America is going to let them do anything.

The Taliban and the other Muslim radicals on the other hand are doing these kinds of things everyday and planning on doing more.

I'm concerned with the people who walk the walk after talking the talk.

Another example is Mel Gibson, who is now famous for his drunken anti-semitic rant. Yes, he's an idiot but he has never lifted a finger to harm anyone. I'm not worried about him.

The leader of Iran who denies the holocaust, talks about sacrificing half of the Iranian population to wipe Isreal off the map, while building nukes. He is an actual real problem that we have to deal with. Good luck trying to appease or reason with him. He has got more oil/money than Allah and is certifiable.

Give him a few more years and we will see mushroom clouds.

Bush has got nothing going on that comes close to what this guy has on his to do list.

don't fall off your chair when I say something good about Richard Nixon. Although I do not like him historically for the Vietnam War, I will say this about him. When he shocked every Republican in the USA by recognizing 'Red China' and travelling there to meet with Mao, he displayed visionary insight that is almost mind boggling. At the worst of the nuclear sabre rattling between the US and China, Nixon had a vision of using trade and commerce to bridge the gap between the 2 nations AND he managed to put a bigger wedge between China and the USSR as a result.

So tell me why all of you free market guys can't come up with something like that as a proposal for the middle east rather than being resigned to the fact that the US has no choice but to attack Iran. As nuts as Abadimajad is (and he is) don't forget that it was Bush who inflamed the whole situation a few years ago with his famous 'axis of evil' speech.

Even though I don't buy into the 'market is master' stuff, your free enterprise guys have had a unique opportunity to prove to all of us lefties that your way can bring peace and prosperity to the planet. Instead, the forces of the free market are building war economies based on the manufacuture of weapons and war goods with public dollars.

Bush, if he truly is a free market type AND NOT just a war hungry yahoo from Texas, has probably blown an opportunity for you right wing guys to prove us lefties wrong.

I mean for gawds sake, the USA has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the war in Iraq. The US could have probably put the whole nation on salary for a couple of years rebuilding after Saddam (don't forget the annual average income of an Iraqi is not very much) - instead the money has been used to inflate the american arms industry with war economics.

This is your chance to prove all of your free market ideology.

Where is the vision? Where is the bold initiatives to improve life for humanity on the planet.

Instead we have a 'good old boy' who sounds like he has marbles in his mouth. Enough with the war crap.

Wow, what a lot of interesting but bizarre points.

China is hardly a bastion of free market capitalism. I suppose you could call them Commie-lite now but they are still a threat.

What makes you think that Bush is a free-market guy? I am and I don't see much evidence of it in anything he has done.

If in your mind the free market doesn't work why would you entertain a so-called free market solution? Don't you trust your own judgement?

The two best examples of what you are asking for are Germany and Japan after World War II. But they never would have been transformed without first having been beaten to a pulp, their weapons taken away from them, and constitutions imposed.

Another example could be how Regan took down the Soviet Union without firing a shot, by increasing arms production at a rate the soviet economy just couldn't keep up with.

That won't work with Iran because they aren't concerned with their own destruction, they worship death and can't wait to get to the afterlife especially through martyrdom.

And if you look at what their religion says about the end times and the return of their great leader (think Jesus like guy) they believe that if they create the right conditions on earth they can force him to appear. You and I and our lifestyle's are in the way of their God returning, they intend to remove that obstacle.

You finally have some really dangerous religous fanatics here that want to take over and dominate the world, who have the motive, the means, and will soon have the opportunity and now suddenly you don't want to fight?

"China is hardly a bastion of free market capitalism."

Yes I KNOW that - point was a right wing President found a way to talk and investigate trade without war and nukes. Point is why can't this President try something bold as first step rather than the bombing or invasion of Iran that is looming.

"If in your mind the free market doesn't work why would you entertain a so-called free market solution? Don't you trust your own judgement?"

Your 'market rules' ideology is not working well for peace and prosperity on this planet. It seems to love the commerce and profits that a war economy generates. I was trying to let you argue the merits of your ideology to see if there is any elbow room for investigating solutions that due not go directly to war. In other words, does the ideology that you espouse have ANY wiggle room to try and solve some of the problems in the middle east with out thousands and thousands of people having to perhaps, die?
Lay it out - what's the plan?

The world has been talking and trading with Iran for decades now. It hasn't done any good if anything it has had the opposite effect, enabling them to become bolder and more dangerous.


You want wiggle room. Fine, how's this?

If you are not going to deal with the people on this planet in a voluntary manner respecting and upholding their primary, inalienable human rights instead of violating them then you have one of only two choices.

Disarm, or die.
The choice is yours.

If they failed to comply I would start with a small airstrike or missle attack and then repeat the question. Slowly increasing the intesnity of the attacks with each failure to comply until they either complied or the country was a parking lot. I would not commit ground troops to this but would rely as much as possible on missle's and remote systems. The technology is there so that our side could theoretically do this with no losses. I suppose some could argue that a couple of well placed nukes would do the job better than the incremental approach that I am suggesting.

So let me guess now you are going to move the goal posts and ask for a solution with zero loss of human life. Right?

Leftdog,my question to you now is,let's say we go all out,try to talk to Iran,try to calm the waters,then they tell us to take a hike. how long do we keep trying,is there a time limit? Do we try so long that we have given them the time they needed to develope nuclear arms,or should they have been stopped by other means(force),before they reached that point.I hope you realize how many people will die(babies too!) when Iran initiates the final Jihad.

You remember when George Bush called Iran part of an 'axis of evil'. The president they had then was MUCH more moderate than the guy they elected a short while ago (Amadimajhad - hard name to say). The Iranians elected a HARD liner in reaction to what Bush said. To counter Bush's threat, they elected a crazy guy.

Now Bush is threatening to bomb or invade them. Do you think it is wise foreign policy for President Bush to be throwing gasoline on this volatile region? Harper and others fault only the Iranian Leader when Bush is doing stupid, risky and basically INSANE actions! Don't poke at a bear with a stick unless you want him to react.

Friend - Bush wants Iran to react to his taunts! He wants a change of government. American interference in Iran when the Shah (who the americans put into power) was there contributed to the Islamic revolution in the first place. You simply have to do some reading on the history of Iran to even know what the heck you are talking about.

Bush doesn't want to talk. He wants to change the government of Iran. He clearly wants a war just like he wanted a war in Iraq (remember, no weapons of mass destruction found which was his reason for the invasion). Bush is nuts. So is Amadimajhad. God help us all from these madmen!

O.K I don't agree with what you just stated. But you have not answered my question.If all negotiations fail to get Iran to stop it's nuclear ambitions,do we sit by and allow them to produce and possess nuclear arms?

I live in Canada. I do not believe that Iran can do anything to harm us here.

I don't believe for one minute that Iran would start a nuclear war with anyone.

Excellent posting, Leftdog. I totally get it.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS OF THIS POST:

The person who posts here as 'moneybags4me' has been exposed as DAVID MCLEAN of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He used a number of names until he was exposed:
-moneybags4me
-the artist formerly known as...
-farmerjoe
etc etc etc.