BHS

Blackdog: Just to threadjack for a moment; new thread Now, getting back to the topic at hand - if you cared to get your news outside the accepted viewpoint parameters defined by the Toronto Star and The Daily Kos, you'd find that there are hundreds and hundreds of pro-war political pundits who've made the case ad nauseum that you're claiming hasn't been made.

Black Dog included a statement in a different thread that I decided to reply to in an off-topic manner, and my threadjack became so long that I decided it would be better to start a different thread rather than interrupt that discussion. So here goes: Blackdog: You mean, faith-based theories like global climate change "experts" find human activity to be a primary underlying cause of global warming? Keeping in mind that the "experts" are merely the fellows who claim to be experts. And based on that claim and some alarming chatter they've managed to talk gullible government types into funding their largely meaningless computer simulations that by the very nature of their construction can't be correct. Unless you think that a bunch of computer geeks with Green party memberships know every single variable in the most complex system of physical interactions that's ever been studied. Just a single example: the variations of the magnetic fields generated by the earth's core, which directly effect how much solar radiation makes it to the planet's surface, aren't addressed at all. Perhaps they're assumed to gravitate toward a relatively constant mean over time measured in years (as opposed to geological time), but that assumption would be based on absolutely no evidence. It's simple: even if all of the scientists in the world share the same opinion about the cause and direction of climate change, that concensus doesn't make their opinion any more valid. Insinuating that their shared belief is hard fact is crossing the line from scientific concensus (which has an unreliable track record anyway) to religion.

Which makes the whole situtation that much sadder: the most Canadian of Canadians has almost no interest whatsover in how the Canadian government carries out it's business. The last thing I remember the Queen saying that related to Canadian politics in any way (keeping in mind that I don't read the Royal website on a weekly basis or anything) was that she approved of Tommy Thompson. After the Supreme Court had ruled that Quebec's public healthcare scheme was unconstitutional. Way to stay relevant, Your Majesty.

Um....science's supermacy over religion in terms of explaining the natural world and bettering human lives is pretty much self evident. Without science we'd still be squatting in tree branches, throwing our crap at each other and wondering why the thunder god was angry everytime we saw soem lightning. I'd be hard pressed to name any human achievment that was made possible by religion. And both should not be taught because ID is not a theory. Edit: just came across a great line on the subject of teaching ID in schools (and really, when we're talking ID, we're really talking a kind of creationism): "I’m sure all the aerospace companies are just salivating at the prospect of hiring someone who’ll believe the bible over his calculator, and I for one can’t wait to ride in one of the planes they design." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I will agree with you that modern science has a view of the natural world that is more intellectually rigorous than anything religion can provide. The rest of that paragraph is debatable. People came down from the trees and built churches long before anything like what we know to be "science" appeared in the world. And as religion has taken a crucial role in the hierarchal structure of every society that ever existed in pre-modern times you can't deny religion's civilizing force. Indeed, in that light, you'd be hard pressed name any human achievement that wasn't made possible by religion, to some extent. I agree that ID should not be taught as part of the science curriculum. And I doubt it would last as a movement if it were only permitted to be taught as a religious topic. That being said, I don't think that even the most ardent ID supporter would use his ID beliefs in an engineering capacity. Your funny little quip quote seems to imply that a person's knowledge of biology is crucial in how good they are with math, and how they put mathematical knowledge to use. It also implies that people with strong, even zany religious beliefs can't be trusted to contribute to intellectually rigorous scientific study. If you believe that, you might want to read a biography of Sir Isaac Newton.

I have no idea why this was a particularly Canadian political test. None of the questions were specifically about Canadian issues, and could have been just as easily answered by a Finn or Spaniard or Tongolese as by a Quebecois or Albertan. I detected quite a lot of bias in the way the questions were posed as well. I kind of dislike these tests for that reason - there's always a sense that you know what the pollster is really getting at when he asks certain questions. Which in turn colours the way I respond to the question. It's strange that they would calculate a political attitude to the first decimal place of a percentage as if the test and results were scientific, which certainly was not the case. Not that opinion polls are scientific anyway. But to imply that level of accuracy can be determined by a test consisting of 36 questions is just stupid. As I mentioned above, there's the issue of bias in the way the questions were asked, and if the topic at hand isn't approached from several different angles there's less accuracy in the way you can reply - there's no way of qualifying one answer with another.

Are you high?

Anthropomorphism. It works for Disney, and it can work for you too.

This has to be the most rediculous thing I have ever heard - I am assuming you are being sarcastic - because if you aren't you really have no concept of fairness or legality. In any case, if there was a real risk of that Ontario would seperate first and leave it all to Alberta.Most government bonds are held by private investors. The IMF gets involved because it tries to ensure stability and confidence in the world financial system. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fair? Where does fair come into it? "Fair" is a word that's been co-opted by the left to mean giving in to leftist ideology in any given circumstance, however inequitable that happens to be. The legality of the situation is also up in the air. You can guess that debt will be apportioned on a per capita basis, but there's no guarantee that's the way a severing up of the country would play out. The law is, afterall, a product of politics, and bares only a passing relationship with economic rationality. (That's hyperbole, by the way.) For the record, I'm of the opinion that when all the chips have fallen a seperate Quebec will be saddled with something resembling it's portion of the debt, though probably less than the absolute amount. I base this on Quebec's current status as a "have-not" province under the federal equalization scheme. (Which is only "fair".)

I don't know if it's the dullness of GM's products that's to blame here. The Honda Civic isn't an entirely inspiring car (though it seems to have caught the imagination of young men who like to "do" cars). What makes the difference is the general assumption that the Japanese brands cost more but offer unbeatable quality, an assumption that gets bolstered every time a Big Three vehicle gets recalled (which happens way, way too often). Stories about drunken assembly line workers don't help either.

My two cents: if the blame rests within the school system, we're better off looking past superficial funding issues and concentrating instead on an education mindset that gave up on discipline a long time ago, preferring to elevate student self esteem at the expense of teaching adherence to rules and deference to authority.

This is not about threats at all: it is simply looking after the self interest of the rest of the country. Quebec will need to assume its per capita share of the national debt - as will every other political entity that emerges after the dust settles. I am simply pointing out that the logic used by separatists to justify not paying their share of the debt is, in fact, false and any yes voter who believes otherwise is sadly deluded.Think about it, do you think the national debt would magically dissappear if all ten provinces become independent countries? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, the other eight provinces and three territories would foist the debt on Ontario and Alberta. Fortis et liber - ut incepit fidelis sic permanet. By the way, I don't think the IMF has anything to do with our debt. I'm pretty sure all of our debt is held by private investors. But I could be wrong. Feel free to kick dirt in my eyes.

Perhaps the December elections will make this entire discussion moot. I mean, maybe the new Iraqi government will request that the Americans leave. I doubt it.

My favourite part of this is the idea that there will definitely be a backlash, so now they are justified in taking extra measures to ensure that target applicants are protected from irate white males. Create a disparity, proclaim loudly that you already know how the groups disenfranchised will react, and take proactive counter-measures against the backlash that hasn't happened. The EU couldn't do it any better.

Just jumping in to add to Toro's post, that Clinton knew that the Senate wouldn't ratify Kyoto, but signed it anyway. It's easy to be a hero when you're in a position to make lavish promises that you know you won't have to keep. One of the prime examples of the cynical hucksterism that defines the Clinton administration's legacy.

Just jumping into this thread at the end, to take a rare opportunity to agree with Black Dog on something he/she posted. The Constitution Act of 1982 pretty much spelled the end of the role of the British Monarchy in Canadian public policy. The next logical step is to ditch all of the worthless trappings of monarchy and replace them with a fully functional republican (not Republican) government. What we have now is insufficient.

De nada. Thank you too.

As to your first paragraph, my first thought is, "Someone's gotta work the nightshift at McDonalds, and I hope it's not my kid." Simple as that. There are always more positions for unskilled labour than trained labour. These jobs are appealing to hard-working immigrants who didn't have education opportunities in their country of origin. The trick is to maintain a social welfare net that adequately cares for the needs of the truly needy, but isn't so lavish as to take away from the appeal of these unskilled labour positions. My resonse carries into your second paragraph. Countries in the ME get away with temporary immigrant labour because they're absolutely brutal in the way they treat these people. After Gulf War I Kuwait expelled half a million Palestinian Arabs guest workers outright, because they had tended to be supportive of Saddam during the annexation. And you can ask Bill Sampson how the Saudis treat their guest workers. Further to this, you should take into consideration the problems that France is experiencing with it's North African ethnic population. True, these people are French citizens. But their forebearers were brought into France specifically to work in low income jobs and weren't expected to intigrate into the larger French population. This was not expected to be a problem, but clearly it is. Recognizing that there's a need for low skilled immigrant labour is fine, but a country is better off in the long run treating immigrants as full citizens instead of a stop-gap labour problem solution. (Note that Germany has a similar, if less severe, problem with it's Turkish population. Note too that Canada already does the same thing - I live in a part of Ontario with a lot of fruit production. Picking fruit is a terrible job, and for the most part the only people who are willing to do it are Jamaican guest workers. This goes against the rest of my post, but my saving grace is that the guest workers in our case are limited to farm work during the summer months, and number around 19000 as opposed to hundreds of thousands. That, and the fact we have accepted far more immigrants from Jamaica than guest workers.)

There are seven years left in Kyoto, before we're officially off the hook. Some questions to ponder: 1) Will the nations party to Kyoto pick this up again, and try to implement Kyoto Phase II? Or will they let it drop? 2) If they try to impliment Phase II, what will it look like? 3) If it's rejected, will Canada try to implement it anyway? 4) Or, will the whole think sink into the shadows of history? 5) How does any of this affect Canadian businesses that aren't on the list in this article?

More like the arm chewing off it's own body.

theloniousfleabag: The General Assembly (as do the Parliament of Canada and the US Congress) regularly passes resolutions about all sorts of things, approving of this and disapproving of that. None of these resolutions carry any real world weight or set legal precedent. Kofi Annan's opinion is just his opinion. Unless you're keen to make the Secretary General a sort of global dictator. Now, you could argue that the US should obey the rulings of the International Criminal Court on these matters, but if you're unwilling to force a neutered tinpot dictator like Saddam to comply with the conditions of a cease fire agreement that he was a party to, then good luck forcing the US to comply with the rulings of a court whos' legitimacy it has always argued against. (And GATT was superceded by the World Trade Organisation quite a while ago.)

Alright, you are right, war is not illegal. I guess. So I guess that makes it alright to do anything. War is hell, and the will always be colateral. But the U.S. is always boasting a moral standard that the rest of the globe should follow. That in there itself is a mask. There is still a shitload more of what we do not know of. What other weapons, they first deny of using. Then after some evidence comes out they finnaly DO admit to using those weapons. They if they will admit to that, when the evidence is found that they used other questionable munittions, what then? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I guess the UN will have to invade US to ensure they don't have such weapons.

I'm a Canadian with no vested partisan interest in the political dimension of the antiwar movement (I don't like the Democrats): what's my "base partisan motivation"? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Did I say, "Black Dog's partisan motivations"? Um, no. Good to know that you think you're always in my sites, though (so to speak - this not to be taken as any sort of personal threat, my friend). UPDATE: I think the word might actually be "sights". Army Guy?

You are getting off topic Burnsie. Burns, there are immigrant Canadians fighitng in Iraq, there are all sorts of foreigners in Iraq, hell even Americans are fighting them as well. Do not try to single the Canadians out. Pull the wool pack up off your head. They have blinded you for so long. You have been lied to, cheated, and disrepected. They used you and your like to gain support for an illegal war. How many more lies will it take for you Burns before you say enough is enough, how much bullshit can you stand to have shoveled in your face. I am far from a raging lunatic. The pot keeps me nice and calm. The whole thing I am getting at is the 'language' and how it can be changed to fit whatever needs/wants they have. It's a chemical weapon plain and simple. But since you are just firing it on hardware, you don't have to take responsibility for human deaths in any shape or form. It is all about classification of the weapon that needs to be revised. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's not a chemical weapon, unless you define any weapon involving a chemical reaction to be a chemical weapon, in which case every munition with an explosive charge in the shell is also a chemical weapon. Hell, if you really want to get technical about it, every weapon, including Al Capone's baseball bat, is made of chemical compounds. If you poked someone in the eye with a burning spliff that'd be a chemical weapon too. Ban 'em all! The war isn't illegal. No court in the world has been convened to make that decision, nor has any court ruled that way about any war that I can think of. I guess the left's concern for due process and the presumption of innocence only extends to dictators and terrorists. I can't speak for Burns, but the only disrespect and bullshit I've had to experience in regards to the debate about the war comes from the left, where a loud declaration of having higher moral standards is frequently a self-deluding mask for the basest partisan motivations.

Woodward's article in WAPO is linked to in the other thread on this topic.

There's nothing in the story that indicates a 180 degree turn - in fact, the author goes to lengths to give the general impression it's Canadian "business" acting in concert and changing it's tune, while avoiding a statement that it's the same businesses in both cases. I don't think there's anything too amazing about this. For companies like Shell there's good reason to want the government to commit itself in writing to a plan, so they know what sort of red tape and other nastiness to expect. For companies like Bombardier it's always good business to suck up to the government, because your solvency depends on it. Bombardier would have gone out of business years ago if the feds hadn't stepped in time and again with financial assistance and tax relief. You can bet that no matter how difficult Canada's Kyoto plan is for other businesses, the government's favouritism with respect to Bombardier will see special exemptions or other assistance put in place, and Bombardier's executives know it and are unafraid.