The distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one...

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I was not really suggesting it, I was trying to get some sense of the violence that was being hinted at if Ireland were to take over.

The main thing is the differential breeding rate and how it impacts on the democratic process.

What you need to do is persuade the citizens of Toledo to want to become Michigans. So you do all you can to make Michigan a good place to live. And get a radio station beamed in on Toledo telling them and what a dump Ohio is.

50 years and Congress will nod it through if that's what the good people of Toledo want after a few Propositions and a referendum or three. At first you will have to get the traffic cops to redirect an agreed proportion of the pork barrels.

Again, the majority of the members were also Orangemen/Scots Irish. They hated Catholics, Jews and Blacks in that order.

Pre-origins... hating the Mexican Catholics. Hatefulness, seriously, how can you claim I am hateful when talking about people who lynched and murdered people because of their skin colour or religion. Spare me your indignation. I can't help it if you want to believe something aside from the truth. Did you bother looking up the Canadian origins of the Klan? Did you read either manifesto? Have you looked around the province of Ontario? Who the hell is Bommer?
Again, conversations take on tangents of their own. If I were to sit with you, would you dictate where the conversation went? Pretty ******* boring...

Blacks were last?

In my opinion, your double standard is showing. So, if there is bloodshed in Israel, because the Palestineans are emboldened by Euroepeans taking up their cause, will European pro-Palestinean activists quickly do a Pontius Pilate at that point and claim no involvement?

Yeah - what Al Quaeda did on Sept 11, 2001 was murder, was it not?

How is continued warfare now - eleven years later- any different?

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To my way of thinking, Foofie, there was no justification - whatever the perceived gains argued - for bombing Japanese civilians.
I feel much the same about the drone attacks now.

You have every right to your opinion. I am happy though that your opinion is not coming from you as an American. Your being an Australian, there is no reason for me to want you to see my perspective, since my perspective is that of an American. Naturally, many Americans do not agree with me, and could agree with you. Now that saddens me.

Foofie is obsessed with race and nationality, I've never known anyone go on about it quite as much as him.

I agree with you about drones, like Guantanamo Bay they recruit more people to the cause than they ever manage to kill/capture.

The UK must change its arms export policy to prevent weapons and other military equipment being sold to authoritarian regimes because the Arab spring has shown the system is fundamentally flawed, a Commons report warns.

A review of export controls also highlights how the Foreign Office has admitted it is now concerned about allowing the sale of certain specialist equipment to Argentina, which has included counter-submarine hardware, as well as components for military radar and combat aircraft.

The report of the joint committees on arms export controls includes previously unpublished details about what has been sold abroad over the past two years.

It also highlights how an unprecedented number of export licences had to be revoked because of fears that British equipment could be used for human rights abuses in the Middle East and north Africa. In all, 158 arms licences had to be withdrawn.

The committee says this is "demonstrable evidence that the initial judgments to approve the applications were flawed". Although restrictions have been introduced, MPs question whether exports to certain countries in the region, including Bahrain, can be justified.

Under the government's own guidelines, licences cannot be issued if there is a clear risk that the equipment might provoke conflict or could be used to facilitate internal repression.

Records for last year show 97 licences were granted for sales to Bahrain for equipment including assault rifles, sniper rifles, body armour, gun silencers, shotguns, pistols, weapons sights and small arms ammunition.

"Bahrain is self-evidently a very sensitive country, given the very serious human rights violations that took place there," said Sir John Stanley, the select committee chairman.

"There have been very serious human rights violations involving doctors and nurses. We have picked out those [licences] which we think are most questionable on grounds for use for internal repression."

The committee says there is a compelling case for the Foreign Office to include the 28 countries on its watchlist for human rights abuses as part of a review of arms export policy. These nations include Russia, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

"The government should extend its arms export policy review to include authoritarian regimes and countries of human rights concerns," said Stanley. On Argentina, Stanley said the views of the Foreign Office reflected concern in the government about the UK's "previous Falklands experience, where British ships were tragically sunk and many people lost their lives". He added: "The only explanation I can put is that the government is concerned about the policies they have been following hitherto on arms export licences to Argentina."

When you're right, you're right!

In the 1650s, Menasseh Ben Israel, a rabbi and leader of the Dutch Jewish community, approached Oliver Cromwell with the proposition that Jews should at long-last be readmitted to England. Cromwell agreed, and although he could not compel a council called for the purpose in December 1655 to consent formally to readmission, he made it clear that the ban on Jews would no longer be enforced. In the years 1655–56, the controversy over the readmission of Jews was fought out in a pamphlet war. The issue divided religious radicals and more conservative elements within society. The Puritan William Prynne was vehemently opposed to permitting Jews to return, the Quaker Margaret Fell no less passionately in favour. In the end, Jews were readmitted in 1655, and, by 1690, about 400 Jews had settled in England.

Do all Americans respond in exactly the same way to whatever occurs?
Probably not.

As to the US drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen & elsewhere, I'll be blunt about my attitude toward them.
I think they are obscene.
And completely disproportionate to the actual threat which these so-called "terrorists" (in dusty outposts in some of the poorest parts of the planet) actually pose to the US.

I read a report recently (sorry, I can't find it now) which suggested that Democrat voters overwhelmingly supported the current administration's escalation of the drone attacks.
BUT, surely these were the very same people who were so outraged by Bush's "war against terror" & voted for an alternative?
I honestly don't understand how they could be supporting an escalation of that war now.

Somebody explain it to me, please, because it makes no sense to me at all.

Today's entry into the series is interesting. A blurb:

But that's the thing, he said: Secrecy isn't always the main driver here. Sometimes diplomacy is. "The requirement of non-acknowledgement" is. It's very common for cooperation and consent to be drawn from other countries only if you don't acknowledge something. They say, You can do this, but you can never acknowledge that you're involved.

So there are deals — deals that have already been made. And part of the deal is that you don't acknowledge the deal. If you do, then the country you made the deal with is obligated to do react, because now there's been a violation of sovereignty. The problem is that there are a lot of these kinds of deals, because they are so easy to make. They're a little like allowing a source to go off the record in journalism. If the source asks, Can I go off the record?, you'll say, Of course you can, because you want the source to talk. It's the same in statecraft. You make the deal because you want there to be a deal....

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-drone-strikes-10558354#ixzz20QkeaYFH