Give Steve long enough and he and his party will find themselves embroiled in scandal, it’s inevitable. The conservatives and the liberals are what are called “oppo-sames” (they appear to be in opposition but in reality there is nothing different about the way they function.
In the meantime we should not be carping about refugees.
And Steve should remember the role of Canada as peace keepers, which is a reputation he is rapidly destroying.
You show your obvious distaste for our leader by calling him Steve.
I am for what ever leader does the best for our country and tries to tell the truth .
Unfortunately our last two leaders did not do that and this is why we have a new leader who is doing a good job particularly for being so new .
Give him a chance the last party had many chances and still did not tell the whole story. Sort of like OAHI continually evade the truth.
Roy Cooke sr.
I’m a tri-national: US, Ireland and Great Britain. Americans are everywhere. There’s no place on the globe so remote that, if a disaster strikes, you don’t immediately hear on the news that “efforts are underway to evacuate [the truly astonishingly high number of] Americans living in [some God-forsaken piece of real estate].” It is truly amazing.
There were plenty of Yanks in Lebanon, too.
Paul, maybe you are too young to remember or maybe you have never read any history, but Canadian troops were / are warriors first and “peace keepers” a distant second. During both world wars the Germans feared Canadian troops and often doubled their own opposite numbers when they knew the “Canuks” were in the line. In Korea, some of the most intense and bitter fighting was seen on the Canaidan front and the Chi-Coms quickly came to know that a Canadian position was not easily overthrown and a Canadian assault was to be feared. From the north Atlantic to the far east, from Holland to north Africa, Canadians fought, fought hard and won, as they are doing in Afghanistan today.
Canadians are not just “peace keepers” ( this being the invention of Lester Pearson and his slashed military budgets of the '60s) Canadian troops are warriors. Warriors, who sometimes have to MAKE the peace.
As an aside, isn’t it funny how the liberal always is reduced to name calling? Sort of weakens their stance, don’t you think?
At 56 I am not that much different in age than our fearless leader, and yes I do not respect him, nor do I respect Dubya, or any of the fearless leaders who are causing untold mayhem all over the planet as we speak.
Warriors in my opinion are those who protect the weak and have strong moral standards, something that the Canadian military always had a reputation for. If you want to read about the present day situation from someone who had been in the thick of it you should read The War Against Truth. If that doesn’t open your eyes then nothing will.
Forget labels, Liberals, Conservatives, they are all the same, they are politicians, pushed and pulled by the whims of the corporations that own them. My prediction: give Harper a long enough rope and he will hang himself, it’s just a matter of time. Same thing with Bush.
Give me a politician who is brave enough to stand up and say THIS IS WRONG, THE KILLING OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS IS WRONG. Not, well it’s okay just this once because there are extenuating circumstances…
You assume I am a liberal because I oppose Steve, you assume wrongly.
As long as there is any form of war civilians will be in the cross fire. You cannot pick and choose and the intelligence is not always accurate. In war you can only try to reduce collateral damage.
Freedom and democracy are costly to maintain.
Read this weeks McLeans Magazine on the Kardr family who reside in Toronto. Why are these people in Canada, on welfare, receiving medical care, education…?
I assume nothing ( assume ) to assume makes an a$$ out u and me.
I do know you sure do not show the elected leader of our country the respect deserves.
If you like him or not does not give you the right to show disrespect.
I do not see from my post that you can tell what party I support .
Roy Cooke sr
At least Steven Harper doesn’t have monogramed balls! (golf). 
Let’s see -
" I hate Hrper."
“I hate Bush”
“They are killing innocent people.”
“pontificating self-righteous fatso”
Nope. You’re not a lliberal.
You should try to get your head out of CNN for a while and read something other than the left wing press. Unfortunately your anti-Americanism is showing.
I am still amazed that none of you seem to be able to see the human tragedy in all of this.
As for Steve, I was taught that respect has to be earned. When he has earned my respect I’ll give it to him. Until then it is Steve and his buddy Dubya with their other buddy Bliar.
.I must be missing something where does the elected leader’s of our countries have appease you to gain their respect .
Respect was what MY PARENTS taught me from when I was a baby.
You continue to show disrespect for the leaders of our countries .
I am sorry for you it is too bad you lack the ability show respect for those who have earned it .
This attitude only furthers many of todays difficulties through out the world.
You should be glad you are in a country where you at least are able to show your true feelings.
Roy Cooke Sr.
OK let me get this straight… I should respect people whose answer to conflict is to kill people… hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…
No I think you lack the ability to show respect to any one .
Life is so short it is too bad that you seem to be so full of disrespect .
No where have I said I agree or disagree with the decisions being made by our leaders.
They most certainly have more knowledge and staff to help them make difficult decisions.
Many decisions they have to make are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Some good some not so good.
I do not know many things they do, and I try not to make difficult decisions till I can get more of the story.
Life treats me well and I enjoy every minute of every day and know when I leave I will not have pleased every one but I will also have had a great time while I was here with very few regrets.
. 56 EH! " Originally Posted by wblakey
At 56 I am not that much different in age than our fearless leader, " Like me you are able now to get the seniors discount and are on the down hill run of life , Hope you too can enjoy it ,I do. Roy Cooke Sr
: OH! THE INDIGNITY OF IT ALL
A little gratitude would be nice
[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]HMMM? some food for thought.[/FONT][FONT=Arial] [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial] [/FONT][FONT=Arial]Whiners: Find your own way out ofBeirut: [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]After being rescued from war zone,a little gratitude would be nice
[/FONT]The Edmonton Journal
Fri 21 Jul 2006
Aw, the boat ride was too long, was it? And you say it was too hot?
There was no doctor on board, either? And the departure was delayed. And the port was chaotic.
And too little food and water had been laid in.
And some of you had to sleep on the floor!?
Oh, the indignity of it.
To listen to the whining and carping of many of the 261 Canadians rescued
from Beirut on the first day of the evacuation from Lebanon, you would think
they had just been returned to port from an ocean cruise that went terribly
wrong, instead of being saved from a war zone.
Tuesday, the Crown Princess, a Princess Cruises ship, suddenly listed to
port in heavy seas off the coast of Florida. The promenade deck almost
submerged. Stairwells “became waterfalls.” The casino and gift shop below
decks were flooded. The main dining room had to be turned into a triage ward as more than 200 of the 3,100 passengers on board were injured by the sudden tilt; 94 had to be taken off for hospitals on shore.
By contrast, no passengers on the first Canadian rescue ship were injured.
The worst that happened was a few threw up.
And, yet, the grousing and moaning on the Crown Princess did not equal that
of the evacuees from Lebanon when they reached Cyprus early Thursday
morning. Some even cursed at the Canadian diplomats who greeted them.
One woman from Montreal described the trip as “hell;” not the war, but
rather her tax-paid voyage to freedom. After all, it had taken 15 hours
instead of seven. Twice their ship, the Blue Dawn, had been stopped by the
Israeli navy to ensure it was not hostile.
Imagine that. Stopping a ship in a war zone to see whether it is friend or
foe. How rude!
And the griping doesn’t end with those Ottawa has already plucked from the
suddenly very hot zone in south Lebanon. Others still awaiting evacuation
complain that our embassy in Beirut has not dealt with them fast enough.
Their e-mails have gone unanswered, their phone calls meet with a busy
signal. If they present themselves in person, there are long lines in the
hot sun to meet a Foreign Affairs official face-to-face.
There aren’t hotel rooms for them all. The waiting rooms are inadequate for
the numbers wanting to leave. Embassy staff will not give precise departure
times.
No kidding.
We’re not talking about the returns desk at Wal-Mart the day
after Christmas.
A staff of two dozen, who normally deal with a few thousand inquiries a year
are suddenly swamped with 2,000 or 3,000 people demanding to be saved - Now!
In a city that no longer has a functioning airport.
Where fighter-bombers frequently scream overhead. Air raids do tend to disrupt the flow of things.
It’s a wonder our government managed, at all, to find seven underused cruise ships it could lease on such short notice.
On the first day that any country was able to get its citizens out by boat,
we managed to rescue 261.
The British got out just 170 of their people.
TheFrench, who have a fleet of warships patrolling the Mediterranean, could
manage just 180.
Thursday, we rescued another 1,375.
And thereafter, we should be able to extract 700 to 1,000 swearing, muttering ingrates each day, either to Cyprus or Turkey.
But just wait until they get to safe ports and find out they have
several-day waits ahead of them until they can be airlifted - again at
taxpayers’ expense - to Canada.
When told she might have to sit put in Cyprus for a few days until a jet
ride could be arranged, and that while she waited she would have to find and pay for her own hotel and meals, one of the first evacuees complained that the government had not already taken care of such things.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility? To simple gratefulness?
I don’t expect the rescued Canadians to bow down and kiss the feet of our
diplomats when they arrive on safe soil. But why is it too much to expect
they might be thankful simply for being extracted from a danger zone,
regardless of how uncomfortably?
They remind me of the Canadian and British antiwar activists extracted by
commandos earlier this year from months of captivity in Iraq, who rather
than saying thank you criticized the rescuers for using force to free them.
Wouldn’t you be grateful to be rescued from Lebanon right now even if you
and your family had to ride out in the fish hold of a trawler for a few days?
And yes it does matter that many of those complaining are Canadians of
convenience. They hold Canadian passports, but have dual citizenship in
Lebanon and have not been much interested in Canada for years until their
real home country started getting dangerous.
There is a simple solution to this carping. The boats have to go back to
Beirut for more evacuees. Anyone who profanes a Canadian worker or whines
about conditions on the free boat gets put back on board and returned to
Lebanon where they can find their own way out.
Lorne Gunter
Columnist/Editorial Writer,
National Post
Columnist, Edmonton Journal
[/FONT]
OK I agree, we should have left the whole lot of those ungrateful bastards on the beach, in fact probably would have been better to shell them ourselves. In fact probably would have been better to load them onto the boats and then throw them overboard once we got out to sea, and then go back for another load.
Yep, they’re definitely not real Canadians cuz if they were they would have been grateful to stand in line while Hezbulla and the Zionists shot it out around them. Oh, excuse me, am I in your way… please shoot through me I don’t mind…
Standing up for Canada? The Harper government’s refusal to demand an end to the bombings of Lebanon
By David Orchard
For two weeks, tiny Lebanon has been pounded by bombs, shells and high
tech missiles from land, sea and air. Its coast is blockaded, its
airport smashed. Sixty plus bridges have been destroyed; roads, schools,
ports, churches, mosques, grain depots, radio, television and telephone
towers, ambulances, power stations, fuel depots, a hospital, milk
factory, pharmaceutical plant and entire residential city blocks
pulverized. Frantic relatives with bare hands try to free those buried
alive.
Officially 384 Lebanese civilians are dead, one third of them children,
thousands wounded, some 800,000 rendered homeless. The numbers are
rising daily.
A million tourists, expats and “snowbirds,” including roughly 50,000
Canadians, were trapped in the country. Twenty fleeing civilians were
burned alive by Israeli missiles after being ordered from their homes.
The Israeli government stated that the bombardment of its neighbour is a
reaction to the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas
operating from Lebanon, and that its operations will continue
indefinitely. Seventeen Israeli civilians have been killed by shells
fired from Lebanon after Israel began bombing.
The Lebanese prime minister begs for international intervention and a
cessation of hostilities saying his country has suffered “unimaginable
losses” and is being “ripped to shreds.” Jan Egeland, UN Emergency
Relief Coordinator, called the bombing “horrific” and “a violation of
humanitarian law.” The secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi
Annan, demands an immediate ceasefire: “The excessive use of force is to
be condemned. Israel’s disproportionate use of force and collective
punishment of the Lebanese people must stop.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, issued a
warning concerning war crimes. “International law demands
accountability. The scale of killings in the region, and their
predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of
those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.”
Canada is a charter member of the United Nations with a long, active
history in international affairs, peacekeeping and mediation. The
current Canadian government was recently elected promising to “stand up
for Canada.”
With 50,000 Canadians in harm’s way what has been our government’s
response? Canada’s new UN ambassador, John McNee, told the Security
Council that Israel’s action in Lebanon “was an exercise in its right to
self-defence.” The minister of foreign affairs, Peter MacKay, refused
point blank to endorse the secretary general’s call for a ceasefire.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated: “Israel’s response, under the
circumstances, has been measured.” He announced that it was “too early”
to call for a ceasefire. These words, in essence, signalled a green
light from Canada for the bombing to continue.
Eight visiting Canadians, including four children, were killed by
Israeli bombs. The Canadian government made no protest. Is this Mr.
Harper’s idea of “standing up for Canada?”
Anyone can understand the difficulty of putting together a mass
evacuation under bombardment; what cannot be understood, or forgiven, is
the refusal of our government to demand an end to the hostilities
creating the chaos and suffering.
The Harper government’s abject response to the murder of Canadians and
its refusal to demand an end to the bombing constitutes an abandonment
of its duty to protect Canadians and to defend the rule of law on behalf
of all humanity.
If one ignores that 400,000 Palestinians driven from their land have
existed for decades in refugee camps in Lebanon; that Israel routinely
crosses borders, captures and assassinates Palestinians, including
elected leaders; that it has over 9,000 in its jails, including some
Lebanese; and if one accepts Mr. Harper’s thesis that Hezbollah is a
terrorist organization, then a comparison could be made with Britain
responding to the capture of two of its soldiers by the IRA in Northern
Ireland by reducing Dublin’s airport and the rest of Ireland’s
infrastructure to rubble. Who could defend that as a “measured” response?
Gideon Levy, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said, “In Gaza, a
soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts
civilians from their homes and locks them up for years without a trial ?
but only we’re allowed to do that. And only we’re allowed to bomb
civilian population centres.”
Our government in Ottawa has, whether for reasons of religion or
ideology, sided uncritically with a foreign government, in this case
Israel’s, at the expense of our own national interests as Canadians and
law abiding members of the world community.
David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada ? Four Centuries of
Resistance to American Expansionism. He farms in Borden, SK and ran
twice for the leadership of the former Progressive Conservative Party of
Canada. He can be reached at davidorchard@sasktel.net
<mailto:davidorchard@sasktel.net>, tel 306-652-7095
Roy Cooke Sr.
I want to know why a bunch of protesters were marching in Toronto supporting Hezzbolah a known terrorist group. I can see people protesting the war but a known terrorist group being supported by Canadians?
Welcome to Canada where if you are a terrorist, a radical, an extremist religious fanatic, a group planning to blow up selected sights, or are one of the Kahdr family, there is a place for you!
Paul, sorry to gang up on you. You are entitled to your beliefs whether or not I ( we) agree with them.
However, your complete lack of any compassion for the Isralis who were kidnapped to begin this whole mess and for the Israli civilians who are being killed by terrorist bombs and rockets is quite shocking. Where is your concern for all humanity? Why do you only see the loss on the terrortist’s side?
I know you don’t believe in war as a means and an end but sometimes, as is the case here and in Iraq and in Afghanistan that is the only answer left. Isreal has been trading off land for peace for decades and all they get in return is further terrorist outrages. Until the people of Lebanon throw the terrorists out of their country and stop allowing the use of the southern parts of Lebanon as a staging area for attacks on Israel, they are complicite in the crimes being committed by the terrorists.
“He who sews the skys will reep the whirlwind.”
I would suggest you have a good look at the second world war. If we, and I do mean Canadians, had not helped out when we did the Bavarian Corporal may have gotten his way in Europe and where would your self righteous indignation be now? You sound like the only government that is any good is the one you put into power, or, you didn’t bother to vote due to lack of interest. If you didn’t vote you didn’t fullfill your mandate as a Canadian and have no right to bitch about the government. You seem to think that Mr Harper is root of evil in this country. Lets get to the issue here. When Mr. Trudeau came to power the debt, per person in Canada, was right around $2000.00 when he left power it was quickly approaching $20,000.00, and this from what may have been the greatest Statesman this country has seen. If you stand by what you say that all the politicians are the same then who would you suggest we vote into power?
I am glad to see Johnny the Cretin go, along with all the Liberal cronies that hung with him. I was hoping and honestly thought that his successor would do the right thing and I was let down big time. I cannot see the NDP run this country as then we would have Jack Leyton at the helm, God forbid. Ask anyone who was in Ontario during Bob Ray’s reign and you will find most people think he ruined the economy, I agree. So, Mr. Blakey, who do we put into power? Certainly you are not suggesting the Green Party, or maybe a rerun of Preston Manning disguised as a Liberal?
Wake up.
Larry