The Canadians in Aghanastan are there as a Peace Keeping Force, and cannot fire unless fired upon.

Ah but wait a minute there ^ shwa
Weren't the oil prices going down while Ernesto was still considered a threat? I remember thinking it strange at the time.

Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map

The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

The article suggest that Quebec and parts east have long thought of Israel as the devil incarnate.

so I will inform you that Quebec in large part, although being typically anti-everything - is definitely anti-jew.

The article also suggests that although Israel's response was over-the-top, that the hezbollah started the rif by entering Israel to begin with.

Does any-one in here think that maybe Iran is not really a threat and we are being fed that to support Isreali / American agression?

Do they want nukes as a deterent?

Evolution contradicts known LAWS of physics, like the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

We now know that there are in fact tens of thousands of irreducibly complex systems on the cellular level.

Watch the movie, "Mars Attacks!". See the cute little aliens listening to offers of negotiation? What is their response? Now you have some idea about what we're up against.

Evolution has left numerous records which reveal the history of different species. Fossils, together with the comparative anatomy of present-day plants and animals, constitute the morphological, or anatomical, record. By comparing the anatomies of both modern and extinct species, paleontologists can infer the lineages of those species. Important fossil evidence includes the connection of distinct classes of organisms by so-called "transitional" species, such as the Archaeopteryx, which provided early evidence for the link between dinosaurs and birds,[13] and the recently-discovered Tiktaalik, which clarifies the development from fish to animals with four limbs.[14]

The development of molecular genetics, and particularly of DNA sequencing, has allowed biologists to study the record of evolution left in the organisms' genetic structures. The degree of similarity and difference in the DNA sequences of modern species allows geneticists to reconstruct their lineages. It is from DNA sequence comparisons that figures such as the 95% similarity between humans and chimpanzees come.[15][16]

Other evidence used to demonstrate evolutionary lineages includes the geographical distribution of species. For instance, monotremes and most marsupials are found only in Australia, showing that their common ancestor with placental mammals lived before the submerging of the ancient land bridge between Australia and Asia.

Scientists correlate all of the above evidence, drawn from paleontology, anatomy, genetics, and geography, with other information about the history of Earth. For instance, paleoclimatology attests to periodic ice ages during which the world's climate was much cooler, and these are often found to match up with the spread of species which are better-equipped to deal with the cold, such as the woolly mammoth.

Morphological evidence
Fossils are critical evidence for estimating when various lineages originated. Since fossilization of an organism is an uncommon occurrence, usually requiring hard parts (like teeth, bone or pollen), the fossil record is traditionally thought to provide only sparse and intermittent information about ancestral lineages. Fossilization of organisms without hard body parts is rare, but happens under unusual circumstances, such as rapid burial, low oxygen environments, or microbial action[17].

The fossil record provides several types of data important to the study of evolution. First, the fossil record contains the earliest known examples of life itself, as well as the earliest occurrences of individual lineages. For example, the first complex animals date from the early Cambrian period, approximately 520 million years ago. Second, the records of individual species yield information regarding the patterns and rates of evolution, showing for example if species evolve into new species (speciation) gradually and incrementally, or in relatively brief intervals of geologic time. Thirdly, the fossil record is a document of large scale patterns and events in the history of life, many of which have influenced the evolutionary history of numerous lineages. For example, mass extinctions frequently resulted in the loss of entire groups of species, such as the non-avian dinosaurs, while leaving others relatively unscathed. Recently, molecular biologists have used the time since divergence of related lineages to calibrate the rate at which mutations accumulate, and at which the genomes of different lineages evolve.

Phylogenetics, the study of the ancestry of species, has revealed that structures with similar internal organization may perform divergent functions. Vertebrate limbs are a common example of such homologous structures. The appendages on bat wings, for example, are very structurally similar to human hands, and may constitute a vestigial structure. Other examples include the presence of hip bones in whales and snakes. Such structures may exist with little or no function in a more current organism, yet have a clear function in an ancestral species of the same. Examples of vestigial structures in humans include wisdom teeth, the coccyx and the vermiform appendix.

Molecular evidence

Comparison of the DNA sequences allows organisms to be grouped by sequence similarity, and the resulting phylogenetic trees are typically congruent with traditional taxonomy, and are often used to strengthen or correct taxonomic classifications. Sequence comparison is considered a measure robust enough to be used to correct erroneous assumptions in the phylogenetic tree in instances where other evidence is scarce. For example, neutral human DNA sequences are approximately 1.2% divergent (based on substitutions) from those of their nearest genetic relative, the chimpanzee, 1.6% from gorillas, and 6.6% from baboons.[18] Genetic sequence evidence thus allows inference and quantification of genetic relatedness between humans and other apes.[19][20] The sequence of the 16S rRNA gene, a vital gene encoding a part of the ribosome, was used to find the broad phylogenetic relationships between all extant life. The analysis, originally done by Carl Woese, resulted in the three-domain system, arguing for two major splits in the early evolution of life. The first split led to modern Bacteria and the subsequent split led to modern Archaea and Eukaryote.

The proteomic evidence also supports the universal ancestry of life. Vital proteins, such as the ribosome, DNA polymerase, and RNA polymerase are found in the most primitive bacteria to the most complex mammals. The core part of the protein is conserved across all lineages of life, serving similar functions. Higher organisms have evolved additional protein subunits, largely affecting the regulation and protein-protein interaction of the core. Other overarching similarities between all lineages of extant organisms, such as DNA, RNA, amino acids, and the lipid bilayer, give support to the theory of common descent. The chirality of DNA, RNA, and amino acids is conserved across all known life. As there is no functional advantage to right or left handed molecular chirality, the simplest hypothesis is that the choice was made randomly in the early beginnings of life and passed on to all extant life through common descent.

Molecular evidence also offers a mechanism for large evolutionary leaps and macroevolution. Horizontal gene transfer, the process in which an organism transfers genetic material (i.e. DNA) to another cell that is not its offspring, allows for large sudden evolutionary leaps in a species by incorporating beneficial genes evolved in another species. The Endosymbiotic theory explains the origin of mitochondria and plastids (e.g. chloroplasts), which are organelles of eukaryotic cells, as the incorporation of an ancient prokaryotic cell into ancient eukaryotic cell. Rather than evolving eukaryotic organelles slowly, this theory offers a mechanism for a sudden evolutionary leap by incorporating the genetic material and biochemical composition of a separate species. This evolutionary mechanism has been observed. Heneta, a protist, is an extant organism that is undergoing endosymbiotic evolution[21][22].

Further evidence for reconstructing ancestral lineages comes from junk DNA such as pseudogenes, i.e., 'dead' genes, which steadily accumulate mutations. [23]

Since metabolic processes do not leave fossils, research into the evolution of the basic cellular processes is done largely by comparison of existing organisms. Many lineages diverged when new metabolic processes appeared, and it is theoretically possible to determine when certain metabolic processes appeared by comparing the traits of the descendants of a common ancestor or by detecting their physical manifestations. As an example, the appearance of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere is linked to the evolution of photosynthesis.

Evidence from studies of complex iteration

"It has taken more than five decades, but the electronic computer is now powerful enough to simulate evolution" assisting bioinformatics in its attempt to solve biological problems.[24] Computer science allows the iteration of self changing complex systems to be studied, allowing a mathematically exact understanding of the nature of the processes behind evolution and providing evidence for the hidden causes of known evolutionary events. The evolution of specific cellular mechanisms like spliceosomes that can turn the cell's genome into a vast workshop of billions of interchangeable parts can be studied for the first time in an exact way.

Christoph Adami et al., for example, make this point in Evolution of biological complexity:

To make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show that, because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural "Maxwell Demon," within a fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced to increase. [25]

David J. Earl and Michael W. Deem also make this point in Evolvability is a selectable trait:

Not only has life evolved, but life has evolved to evolve. That is, correlations within protein structure have evolved, and mechanisms to manipulate these correlations have evolved in tandem. The rates at which the various events within the hierarchy of evolutionary moves occur are not random or arbitrary but are selected by Darwinian evolution. Sensibly, rapid or extreme environmental change leads to selection for greater evolvability. This selection is not forbidden by causality and is strongest on the largest-scale moves within the mutational hierarchy. Many observations within evolutionary biology, heretofore considered evolutionary happenstance or accidents, are explained by selection for evolvability. For example, the vertebrate immune system shows that the variable environment of antigens has provided selective pressure for the use of adaptable codons and low-fidelity polymerases during somatic hypermutation. A similar driving force for biased codon usage as a result of productively high mutation rates is observed in the hemagglutinin protein of influenza A. [26]

"Computer simulations of the evolution of linear sequences have demonstrated the importance of recombination of blocks of sequence rather than point mutagenesis alone. Repeated cycles of point mutagenesis, recombination, and selection should allow in vitro molecular evolution of complex sequences, such as proteins." [27] Evolutionary molecular engineering, also called "directed evolution" or "in vitro molecular evolution", involves the iterated cycle of mutation, multiplication with recombination, and selection of the fittest of individual molecules (proteins, DNA and RNA). The process of natural evolution can be reconstructed, showing possible paths from catalytic cycles based on proteins to ones based on RNA to ones based on DNA.[28]

Any civilians still on the battlefield in Lebanon should be considered hostiles. These people, actually, they're terrorists and supporters, have been warned repeatedly to leave.

As for the "silly" 1% GST cut....

Wait until you buy a home or a car and do the math.
Its silly on small purchases, yes. But not on major ones.

That was not a perfectly valid ethics investigation. Floor crossing has been around since we have had a political system.

The question becomes, why is a province that is so populous, and home to one of the largest cities in Canada, a "have not" province?

History is already showing, and will continue to show that Capitalism does not work in the long run. too much of the wealth eventually ends up in too few hands and those few then have the power to manupulate the system and soon you have a facism based on currency.

The planet is a closed system and has to managed as such.

I unfortunately have come to the conclusion that the only system that will ever work is one of a benevolent, informed dictatorship.

And for heaven sakes, Chretien was the most corrupt Canadain ever, sheesh!

-Strong, decisive leader (completely opposite of Dithers)

-Some-one who cares deeply about our country

-Intelligence

-Some-one who wants to clean up the hill and change how politics generates money. He does not want big buisness influencing politics. That kind of flies in the face of him being a Bush lover doesnt it?

-Some-one who is in tune with the moderate majority in this country who hands out majority governments wether they be Liberal or conservative

-A moderate thinker who has the ability to unite this country under one flag and would never back down or try to appease the seperatists

-competence

-the ability to make things happen, even in a minority government, no dithering here

Who stands to gain by Harper staying in?
Canada. Every one of us.

Every-thing from righting the wrongs to the Hep C victims, to taking care of our military, to toughening lax laws with regards to violent crime, the list goes on and on.

If humanity was the same biologically and as mentally-capable 40,000 years ago as it is today, why would this species spend 35,000 years running around in a deerskin loincloth bashing rocks together?

Critics have largely rejected the above claims, arguing they are a combination of hoax and urban legend. For example, writer David Richie notes that the Dropa tales intrigued Gordon Chreighton, a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society and Royal Geographical Society. Upon investigation, Chreighton judged the sensationalistic Dropa-Extraterrestrial allegations to be "groundless," and detailed his findings in an article for Flying Saucer Review.

No traceable, credible evidence for this theory exists, or can be proven to have existed in the past. Proponents of the Dropa-stones story claim that this is the result of social disruption caused by the Chinese Cultural Revolution and of a conspiratorial coverup by Chinese authorities. However this story goes well beyond China. Its opponents claim it is long proven to be a forgery by Erich von Däniken.

Below is a detailed rebuttal of most sensationalistic Extraterrestrial/Dropa claims:

* 1. The discovery. There are no mentions of 'Tsum Um Nui' anywhere; as he is supposed to have fled China and died in Japan in the 1960s this cannot be negated by Cultural Revolution - Communist coverup theory. Also, there is no mention of the 1938 archaeological expedition to the Bayan Kara Ula range. No "Peking Academy of Pre-History" ever existed.

* 2. Early Sources. The earliest mention of the story is in Erich von Däniken's infamous 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods. The book has been widely criticised as unreliable; in fact, the vast majority of names and sources appearing in the book cannot be corroborated, and no existence of the following Soviet or Chinese scholars can be found anywhere outside this story: Chu Pu Tei, Tsum Um Nui, Ernst Wegener, Vyatcheslav Saitzev, and Sergei Lolladoff. Most tellingly, Däniken gives his main source for the story as a Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev; however Kazantsev himself disagrees with Däniken's account and says that it was Däniken who told him the story, not the other way around.

* 3. Later Sources. The 1978 book Sungods in Exile "edited" by David Agamon, appeared to lend support to the story of the Dropa, but Agamon admitted in the magazine Fortean Times in 1988 that the book was fiction and that its alleged author, a British researcher named Dr. Karyl Robin-Evans, was imaginary. Some websites claim to show a photo of Dr Robin-Evans with the Dalai Lama. A frail, old man assisted by the current Dalai Lama, the photograph is quite recent and can not be Dr Robin-Evans -- he died in 1978, according to Hartwig Hausdorf.

* 4. Translation. There is absolutely no precedent for an unknown language being successfully deciphered. All lost ancient languages have been rediscovered only because they survived in forms familiar to scientists. Even in such cases, deciphering and understanding these older language forms and their scripts has usually taken decades for multiple teams of highly competent linguists, and their findings are constantly being debated and updated. Many ancient scripts (notably Linear A from the island of Crete and Rongorongo from Easter Island), have defied deciphering precisely because they cannot be linked to any known language. Given these facts, there would be even greater difficulties in translating a truly extraterrestrial language. It is therefore highly unlikely that a single Chinese scholar with no reported background in linguistics could single-handedly decipher an alien script or language in his spare time.

* 5. The Disks. All that exists of the supposed alien disks are several wide-angle photographs. The disks photographed, firstly, do not match the described "12-inch disks"; the disks photographed are very large. Secondly, the photos show none of the supposed deep grooves. Finally, absolutely no photos, descriptions, analyses or any other evidence of the actual 'alien script' appear anywhere at all.

* 6. The Evidence. The disks were supposed to be stored in several museums in China. None of these museums have any traces of these disks, nor can any be found of the ones supposedly sent to USSR for analysis.

* 7. The Dropa Tribe. While reported to be a tribe of feeble dwarfs, in actuality the Dropas are nomadic herders who inhabit most of the northern Tibetan Plateau. The Ham are also inhabitants of Tibet, and traditionally have supplied Tibet's warriors: many of the 13th Dalai Lama's bodyguards during his escape from the Chinese invasion were Ham Tibetans. The word "Dropa", according to Chrieghton, describes the nomadic residents of Tibetan highlands, and can be roughly translated as "solitude" or "isolated". Furthermore, Chreighton described the Dropa as not resembling "troglodytes", or as stunted; on the contrary, they tend to be rather large and sturdy, befitting their occupation as herders. (Richie, 95-96)

They may have been Mycenaeans, due to some similaries in pottery.

Sure, that's a possibility, but it's also suggesting that an entire culture was based on people tripping out on mushrooms or whathaveyou...and to me that doesn't seem very likely...but that could be because I'm influenced by modern society's mainstream attitude towards drugs, which would have been different back then, less hang-ups...

Ok so your saying the evolutionary theory at its roots ex. (Big Bang theory) is not supernatural seeing as though a massive ball of materials used to create life comes out of nothing.

and actually if evolution is so emersed in scientific fact how come it defies the unbunked scientific law of thermodynamics.

and occording to evolution we evoved from apes. that is bullshit seeing hoe there are still apes today much to the dismay of evolutionist extremely similer if not the same as our so called ancestors.

Stilling searching for that non-existent missing link

If natural selection is true then why are humans wasting there time trying to find and discover outer space and our own origins when it isnt relavent to our survival.

Let me be clear that I'm not presenting any of the ancient astronaut theory as gospel truth, but it is fascinating because it does make sense of various mysteries regarding the Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Egyptians and early Israelites. And they drew some weird pictures and statues...flying chariots with wings, submarines, people wearing fish suits, beams of destructive force emitting from towers...what do you make of that? Those stories that appear in so many mythologies had to originate somewhere. Maybe the Sumerians just had really good imaginations...they didn't have TV back then....
Or did they...?

I think that if the collision of our planet with another is what seeded the Earth with life, it stands to reason that there was no life on the planet before then, so, yes, the Sumerians were not around at that point. They claim that the knowledge was told to them by the gods, who came from the planet, which they called the planet of crossing and was represented by a cross.

As far as evidence of a planetary collision goes, it explains the asteroid belt and also Pluto's erratic orbit. As well as the comets, which they say were originally 9 of Earth's 10 moons, which were knocked into their elliptical orbits after the collision. It's as likely an explanation of the origin of the asteroid belt as your "widely accepted" view, which I should point out is also just a matter of faith.

I submit that science is just another religion and its followers get just as outraged by things that question their beliefs as Christians or any other faithful do. Except for Buddhists and Taoists. They don't seem to get outraged by very much...

What's mind boggling about them is that their creation story seems to tell of how a planet from outside our solar system was pulled in by Neptune's gravity and collided with the earth, creating the asteroid belt. And if this was a life-bearing planet, possibly the planet of the gods, the collision may have seeded the planet and made it possible for life to evolve on Earth. This creation story is why the planets are named after gods. The Sumarians knew the earth was a sphere and revolved around the sun. They knew of all the planets. There's tablets that show the solar system.