From Voice Of Women

From the little that I have watched the campaign proceedings, it seems that none of the parties have raised this subject and neither have voters. For the parties a rather very hot potato, but what is the excuse for the voters? Ignorance, indifference, too disquieting a prospect? Ignorance is NOT bliss.

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Vera Gottlieb

In the area of foreign policy, would someone please explain to me what they think Stephen Harper will do once he is in power that would be different from what Paul Martin would have done over the past three years, had the polls only supported him?

Suddnely it's occured to these people to talk about these issues, but what was stopping you a month ago, a year ago, or five years ago? Why now? Is it because you're deeply concerned at where things are going, or is it because you're boy is finding new and more efficient ways of pissing away his last chance to remain Prime Minister?

Why does this remind me of Jack Layton calling for more women in Parliament so as to make the House more civil, kinder, and gentler? What utter rubbish as such ideas are blatantly sexist. We're not inherently aggressive, militaristic, greedy, and discriminatory because we're men, but because that is human nature! Given the chance women would fair no better than man have. This article is just electioneering rubbish.








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"All great truths begin as blasphemies" - George Bernard Shaw

A McC that is the entire point.

Stephen Harper definately supports hard power and enforcing the capitalist economic system through military might (the more extreme form of capitalism that has emerged from traditional liberal philosophy). He has said that public opinion will not sway his decisions and he will use his own judgement. I do not believe there is any question here he will follow where the US leads.

The real question is where Paul Martin stands on the issues. When he was running for the leadership of the Liberal Party having to distinguish himself only from Sheila Copps he took quite an aggressive stand on these issues sounding much like Harper. Since he became Prime Minister he has gone back and forth like a pendulum.

The choices our Canadian elite have given us are pathetic.

However, it is dishonest to say that no one has been bringing up these issues until now. Only someone with their head in the sand could make such a comment.

You're saying I have my head in the sand? I'm sorry, but all I have heard in the last two weeks is people SUDDENLY talking about these issues in attempt to 'sway' people into voting Liberal in order to stop the Tories. And I have my head in the sand? I think not. I'm sick of people suddenly turning onto these issues solely for the reason being that it would appear as though a Conservative government will be elected on Monday. Suddenly now these issues matter? Who has who's head in the sand?

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies" - George Bernard Shaw

Looks like the VOW have an uphill battle on their hands. <br />
<br />
Pharisee Nation<br />
by John Dear<br />
<br />
Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”<br />
<br />
With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”<br />
<br />
So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.<br />
<br />
I was not at all surprised that George W. Bush was reelected president. As I travel the country speaking out against war, injustice and nuclear weapons, I see many people consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice.<br />
<br />
I am reminded of Flannery O’Connor’s great book, “Wise Blood,” where her outrageous character Hazel Motes is so fed up with Christian hypocrisy that he forms his own church, the “Church of Christ without Christ,” “where the lame don’t walk, the blind don’t see, and the dead don’t rise.” That’s where we are headed today.<br />
<br />
I used to think these all-American Christians never read the Gospel, that they simply chose not to be authentic disciples of the nonviolent Jesus. Now, alas, I think they have indeed chosen discipleship, but not to the hero of the Gospels, Jesus. Instead, through their actions, they have become disciples of the devout, religious, all-powerful, murderous Pharisees who killed him.<br />
<br />
A Culture of Pharisees<br />
<br />
We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.<br />
<br />
Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.<br />
<br />
We have become a mean, vicious people, what the bible calls “stiff-necked people.” And we do it all with the mistaken belief that we have the blessing of God. <br />
<br />
Continued at: <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0215-21.htm">http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0215-21.htm</a><br />

Doggone it, Spanky or John Dear, or Whoever is speaking here:
WE have not become "a mean, vicious people" ... this is Canada,
remember? WE decided not to be the warmakers, OK?

BC Mary, read the article... this happened in USA! The text is not talking about Canada.

Up until now we always been a peaceful nation but it will change with a this Conservative Government.