[2Cdo]

I'm curious here about Eric's political leaning. We know Avro holds him up as a conservative who hates George Bush but the more I read his column the more I suspect that he MAY have been conservative in the past and has changed his political bent for whatever reason. I'm thinking he is in the same class as Miss Stronach and Mr Emerson, someone who changed his political beliefs.

What do you think?

[hwacker]

Tool.

[Regina]

I don't know that much about him other than he served in the US Army during the Vietnam war, but never went overseas because of some high ranking General. I've seen him on TVO up until last year and I don't believe he still lives in Canada.

[Motorcycleboy]

Eric Margolis is the only guy from his generation who couldn't get to Viet Nam.

He claims he joined the US Army in 1970 with the intention of going to Nam, but then he manufactured a situation that allowed him to avoid service in a war zone and instead did his uniform time in Germany.

Margolis has been the Toronto Sun's resident conspiracy theorist and crackpot since the early 1980's. It doesn't surprise me that a homophobe like Avro who describes anyone who disagrees with him as a "faggot" would identify with Margolis. After all, Margolis has been accused of closeted homosexual leanings by a number of American commentators in the past.

More importantly, he's a preening buffoon. In 1991, I was stationed in Petawawa awaiting orders to deploy to the first Iraq War. Those orders never arrived. But while we were waiting for it, Margolis wrote a few articles in the newly established Ottawa Sun arguing that any military involvement against Iraq, which at that time he was vaunting as the "world's 4th largest armoured force", was going to be a blood bath.

About 2 hours into the war, as Iraqis were testing the resolve of the allied forces by surrendering en masse and putting our rear echelon under enormous stress by forcing them to process a record number of POW's, Margolic changed his take on the whole show.

Suddenly, he was writing articles talking about how there had never been any doubt that Bush, Powell, Scharzkopff and their armoured legions would crush the Iraqis and how the world was a better place now that they had.

He's a complete idiot.

Make up your own arguments Avro. Eric's a dope.

[Motorcycleboy]

Avro Avro:

I expected this response from you.

Does 2cDuh call you Spike?

Wow! You got me there Avro.

Touche!

[Motorcycleboy]

Avro Avro:

When you post a reply that challenges Eric you will have a point.

Oh really? Maybe you should follow your own threads Avro. Then maybe you'll have a point.



Eric Margolis (as posted by Avro and Refuted by the Brilliant Motorcycleboy on another thread)

$1:

Margolis:
Satirical, racist cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed originally published by a sensation-seeking Danish newspaper have produced an international storm of hysteria and racism.

True. Perpetrated exculsively by Muslims.

$1:

Mobs of enraged Muslims have rioted from Morocco to Indonesia and burned Danish and Norwegian embassies. Editors of other European newspapers that ran the offensive cartoons piously insist they were defending free speech.

Margolis is right here too. The newspapers were exercising free speech. And it is "mobs of enraged muslims" who've rioted over the cartoons. Real mature guys!

$1:

This writer detests any form of censorship, including so-called "hate laws" that are really modern forms of heresy and blasphemy statutes.

So do I.

$1:

But free speech does not include the right to scream "fire" in a crowded movie theatre. And that's just what the European newspapers did. They were trying to boost circulation and pander to anti-immigrant right wingers by attacking Islam.

Bullshit. They were illustrating an obvious point. That being, that it has now become acceptable to write or print things that are extremely offensive to Christians or any other religion, but to do the same thing to Islam is tantamount to suicide.

I think they made their point very well.

$1:

This whole ugly business is really about anti-Islamism -- the modern version of 1930's anti-Semitism.

No it isn't. It's about Islam's inability to tolerate western secularism.

$1:

Promoting hatred and scorn for Islam and Muslims has become the only socially and legally acceptable modern prejudice.

Margolis is wrong here too. We in the west have compromised our own principles in an attempt to appease the proponents of Islam. Time magazine had no problem running pictures of "Piss Christ" when that was an issue in 1996. That despite the fact it was highly offensive to Christians. Yet, because western intellectuals live in fear of being labelled "Islamophobic", few are willing to discuss the "Mohamed cartoons" in a forthright, honest manner.

$1:

Question the Holocaust in Germany or Austria and you go to jail, as Pat Buchanan just wrote. Doing the same in Canada gets you jailed or expelled. But slandering Islam is okay.

Not really. Keegstra went way further than questioning the Holocaust. He also labeled Jews as "conspirators", "barbaric", "materialistic", "deceptive" and "money loving." Keegstra took it one further by downgrading students who refused to subscribe to his racist views.

You can read about him here Eric;


http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/en/timePortals/ ... 28mile.asp

$1:

The Danish paper that ran the racist cartoons "to defend free speech" refused in 2003 to run satirical cartoons of Christ, saying "it would provoke an outrage."

So what? It's a right-wing paper. I don't imagine Margolis's Toronto Sun would run a series of cartoons promoting the federal Liberals either. That's an editorial decision.

$1:

America's four leading evangelical preachers, Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and Marvin Olasky preached a "crusade" against Iraq.

So what? They're nutcases and don't represent the majority of Americans. I've yet to see their followers rioting in the streets of Los Angeles over the "Da Vinci Code" which many Christians find offensive. We can't say that about the Muslims.

$1:

Graham branded Islam "an evil and wicked religion."

And how many Imams have called Jews "Pigs and Monkeys" and Christians "Cross Worshipping Infidels" lately?

$1:

Mohammed was called "a terrorist."

And how many suicide bombers have commited their atrocities in the name of "Mohamed" lately? Maybe that characterization isn't too far off the mark.

$1:

Among American evangelical Christians, one poll showed 87% supported invading Iraq and hoped to convert Iraq's Muslims to Christianity.

Polls, polls, polls. Dogs know what to do with polls.

$1:

Italy's Oriana Fallaci churns out best sellers depicting Islam as a backwards creed of thugs.

Oriana Fallaci is one of the most insightful writers of our time. I've actually read her Avro. Have you?

I doubt Eric has. Because if he had, he would have read the entire chapter in her book "Inshallah" in which she condemns Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and the rape of the Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon in 1982.

$1:

In liberal Holland, it's cool to despise Muslims.

Not quite. But there has been a backlash against fundamentalist Muslims of late. Maybe it has something to do with the assassination of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gough by a Muslim extremist because he had the audacity to challenge muslim misogyny.

$1:

In America, historian Bernard Lewis pumps out screeds on the evils of Islam. Daniel Pipes rails against all things Islamic.

Pipes and Lewis are both far more intelligent and better schooled than Margolis. That's why they have seats at Harvard, and Margolis writes a conspiracy column one day a week for a Toronto tabloid.

$1:

One Danish cartoon of Prophet Mohammed shows him with a long, hooked nose, thick lips, a sinister, malevolent glare on his ugly, semitic face and a curved dagger in his hand.

Change the caption "Prophet Mohammed" to "Jew swine" and you have the double of Nazi anti-Semitic hate cartoons of the 1930s from the pages of Die Sturmer.

Have you seen the anti-semitic cartoons that are commonly printed in the Arab papers? They are far more hateful and bigotted than anything printed in Jyllands Posten. Yet we give "Cairo News" a pass on that.

$1:

That's what this is all about. Modern anti-Semitism, reborn.

Maybe it's about cultural survival reborn.

$1:

What many Europeans are saying through these cartoons is, "we hate Muslims. Make Europe Muslimfrei!" They want Muslims out, just as they did Jews in the 1930s.

Those crazy Frenchmen eh? I guess they have a problem with Muslim youth running around burning Paris suburbs to the ground and gang raping French women because they refuse to wear the Hijab. Racists!

http://www.iris.org.il/blog/archives/75 ... demic.html

$1:

But while Muslims have been egregiously and gravely offended, far too many have reacted hysterically by rioting and burning embassies. The Prophet Mohammed and Islam don't need rioters and arsonists to defend them.

True.

$1:

In an act of utter childishness, Iran's largest newspaper vows to run cartoons ridiculing the Holocaust, proving there is no sickness as contagious as stupidity.

Don't worry. We'll put that newspaper's print offices on the list when we send in the Israeli Air Force (with US Satelite support) to take their nukes out.

Sucked in Iran! Welcome to the 21st Century "3 block war!"

$1:

Muslims suffered 150 years of the most brutal European imperialism and exploitation. Millions of Muslims were slaughtered by European and Russian colonialists, though we seldom hear about this holocaust. Many of Europe's 20 million Muslims are third-class citizens. Muslims have a right to be angry.

Yet Margolis, and others conveniently forget about the 500 years that muslims suffered under Ottoman Turk oppression.

Can't blame him for trying though, can we?

$1:

But where were all these angry Muslims when 250,000 Bosnians were being massacred, and thousands of Muslim girls and women gang raped while mosques were blown up?

Nowhere. Yet there were thousands of Canadians, Germans, Brits and Americans who fought to protect those same Muslims.

$1:

Why no protests over Russia's genocide in Chechnya?

Because Russians don't give a shit if several hundred of their troops die in the war against Muslim extremism each year.

It's no fun if you can't upset home guard types like Avro.

$1:

Or when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and Australia annexed East Timor?

Australia annexed East Timor did they? I guess you could call it that. But you would also have to call the Canadian peacekeeping commitment to Croatia an attempt by Canada to "Annex" that part of the world too.

That's one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

$1:

So why now all the rage over some crass racist cartoons in a second-rate newspaper in an obscure country?

I don't know. Maybe because they are a backwards assed people who are perpetually offended.

$1:

At least protesting through boycotts is sensible.

I agree. And hopefully we'll start boycotting them by refusing to purchase their oil. Then they can choke on it.

$1:

But rioting and burning are worthy only of drunken adolescents and simply reinforce racist claims by western anti-Islamic hate-mongers that Muslims are violent, irrational and backwards.

Racist claims? More like accurate observations I'd say.

[2Cdo]

$1:

Go to his web site Mr. Ignore and you will see how much of a Liberal he isn't.

Wow, that lasted a whole day

Ah, well done "Mr Ignore" that is fucking brilliant! You really think he is a conservative because you "really believe he's a conservative." Good logical argument there, I guess we've been shown.

You have no problem with others changing their political leanings but "Lord Eric" must still be conservative. To believe that he MAY have changed his views would just shatter all that Avro believes in. Though I don't think even Avro knows what he believes in.

On another thread you were called a hypocrite, it was fitting but I would also add "Irritating Asshole" to that. You resort to petty name calling, anti-homosexual slurs, or maybe just some wishful thinking? Sorry Avro, happily married and don't lean that way. Better luck next time though!

If a conservative was to tell you the sky is up, you would argue it was down. You are a pathetic man who resorts to grade school taunts (maybe hanging around the grade school too long) and name calling in a vain attempt at attention. Bye bye Avro, get help soon!

[2Cdo]

$1:

Quote:
Afgan war isn't ours.

By Eric Margolis

Canada has absolutely no strategic, commercial, cultural or emotional interests in Afghanistan


PARIS -- Scattered across South Africa's windswept veldt are the forgotten graves of 266 Canadian soldiers killed from 1899-1902 fighting to impose British Imperial rule on fiercely resisting Boer farmers.

A century later, Canadian troops have again been sent to fight as auxiliaries in another remote war -- this time Afghanistan.

Since time immemorial, when great emperors went to war, they summoned contingents of their vassals and tributaries to their standards. So it was in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, when the U.S. decided to invade those nations and demand its allies join the so-called "war on terrorism."

Under irresistible pressure from Washington to aid its highly unpopular military expeditions in either Iraq or Afghanistan, America's allies and NATO partners opted for the lesser evil, Afghanistan.

That is why 2,100 Canadian troops have ended up in a nation in which Canada has absolutely no strategic, commercial, cultural or emotional interests.

Now, as the number of Canadian military casualties rises, the dismayed public rightly asks, "What are we doing there? We thought it was another peacekeeping mission."

Thank Ottawa and Canada's media for misinforming the public. There was no significant debate in Parliament. The media indulged in flag-waving instead of warning Canadians they were walking into a small, but real, war.

Canadians are not peacekeeping in Kandahar: There is no peace to keep. They are there to help impose U.S. rule over Afghanistan, and safeguard routes for planned oil pipelines.

Canadian soldiers are on a war-fighting mission, auxiliaries in the U.S.-led military occupation of Afghanistan. In the southern heartland of the nation's largest tribe, the famously warlike and xenophobic Pashtun, U.S. forces and their allies are seen as foreign occupiers and enemies of Islam. Pashtun are slow to act but ferocious, and they never forget a wrong.

For some reason, Ottawa agreed to put its little garrison into Afghanistan's most dangerous area, Kandahar, in the centre of Pushtun territory and the heartland of the Taliban. Afghans do not differentiate between Americans and Canadians.

Fierce tribes

Afghan tribes are taking up arms against their foreign occupiers. I saw this happen during the 1980s, when growing hatred of Soviet occupation forces ignited a national uprising.

Today, in the eyes of many Afghans, the U.S. has merely replaced the Soviets. All past occupiers, starting with Alexander the Great, were driven out by the fierce Afghan tribes.

Canucks are prime targets. They lack effective liaison with circling U.S. warplanes that normally bomb and rocket any attackers within 2-3 minutes of an assault. Such deadly instant response by U.S. air power forced the resistance to resort to roadside explosives and car bombs, as in Iraq.

National resistance is growing. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul would not last a day without foreign bayonets.

The former Taliban regime almost totally suppressed the heroin trade. Today, Afghanistan is a narcostate. It supplies 90% of the world's heroin -- the economy runs on drug money. This is the "democratic" regime Canadian troops are defending with their lives.

Parliament, media, and all Canadians have got to begin debating what their soldiers are doing in this war that lacks any foreseeable political resolution. Forget all the cheery propaganda fed to the gullible press: Afghanistan is a dangerous mess and Canadians are right in the middle of it.

When more body bags come home from Kandahar, as they likely will, Canada's politicians are going to have to start explaining to the public what, exactly, its soldiers are dying for in Afghanistan.

More right wing rantings from the hard core conservative!