BHS

Anyone care to comment about how Woodward's testimony affects this thread? I don't think I need to retract anything I've said. I logged on today thinking there might have been some buzz generated by the latest news, but the usual suspects are strangely silent. I was a little sad when mirror (bigdude, whatever) was heaved over the side before the indictments came down, and now even more so. Oh well. I'll be a sport and fan the flames: There's still a very good chance, indeed, that Wilson really was the leaker after all. I've read numerous rumours lately that in years past he was very nonchalant about telling people his wife worked for the CIA in WMD intelligence, when he was schmoozing at Washington get-togethers. Nothing in Woodward's testimony contradicts this possibility. Discuss.

Black Dog: You're being disengenous. White phosphorous is used in "shake and bake" operations to incinerate specific targets in enclosed areas (like tanks). But that's not what you're describing. The intent of lobbing white phosphorous shells into the general vicinity of a combat zone is not to incinerate everybody in that zone, but to flush those hiding in that zone out into the open. The smoke produced from white phosphorous reacts chemically with water in the skin, lungs and eyes of those exposed to produce acid, which causes irritation but does not kill. (Note that there appears to be two different definitions for "smoke" on the web when discussing WP. The actual burning white phosphorous itself is deadly and visibly resembles smoke. The chemical after-product of the burning of white phosphorous, in other words the actual "smoke", creates the chemical irritant described above and is not deadly.) Most disengenuously of all, however, is your failure to acknowledge that the reason white phosphorous shells were selected to begin with was to limit civilian casualties. The US Armed Forces have far more effective methods of wiping out enemy forces hiding in urban cover, but chose WP in an effort to flush out enemy fighters rather than killing indiscriminately. The reason for your disengenuousness is clear: you seek to discredit American efforts by any means possible. The second paragraph of my post above was not so much a straw man as a means of relating this thread back to previous posts you've made, and your previous efforts to undermine the American effort to improve the lives of millions of Iraqis by morally equating the activities and ethos of the US Armed forces with the actions and complete lack of ethics of the terrorists they seek to eliminate. My aim was to put your deliberate misuse of information about WP's use into the broader context of your anti-American (anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic) worldview, so that other readers can see where your argument is coming from.

Thanks RB. My turn: 2) I have to answer your second question first. Population decline isn't a problem if you're content to live in a world where very few people ever get to retire, and where social programs are cut back drastically from their current levels. A declining population is by default an aging poplulation. The way our economy and social programs currently function relies on a steadily increasing supply of productive new blood. If we decide to intentionally allow our poplulation to decline it will force us to make a host of other changes to the way we live to accomodate the consequences. Whether that is a problem or not is pretty subjective. 1) I'm not a big fan of government subsidies period. Baby bonuses and tax breaks have always struck me as low-income vote getters rather than constructive ways to encourage population growth. I don't think there's any reasonable way for the federal government to spend enough money to intice native born Canadians to increase birthrates to an effective level, at the expense of our more modern, low birthrate lifestyle. If you are prepared to live with the consequences I outlined in answer 2, then limiting immigration isn't a problem. Otherwise, we have to rely immigration to maintain our current standard of living. It's as simple as that. Being as I'm in no hurry to make those kinds of drastic changes, I happen to view immigration as a good thing. Even unproductive immigrants have needs that require spending, and spur the economy. I don't believe the old trope about lazy immigrants sucking up welfare money - sure, living on welfare in Canada is better than busting your ass in Bombay (or at least it used to be) but if busting your ass in Canada can make you and your family rich, why not? That's the message I've gotten from all of the immigrants I've known.

The US military DOES take pains to avoid killing civilians. The bullshit comes from people who take the opportunity to present every civilian death, however it occurred, as "proof" that the US military is indiscriminately and wantonly killing civilians. The same people who insist that every weapon involving a chemical reaction is suddenly a "chemical weapon". The same people who consider foreign born terrorists hiding among former Ba'athists to be representative of a majority of a population that clearly despises them. It is NOT the same thing to incidentally kill civilians who were given a chance to evacuate but did not, and to intentionally choose to launch a suicide attack against a target surrounded by children. People who consider the two to be morally equivalent are as repugnantly barbaric as the terrorists who perpetrate said suicide attacks.

Okay, Blackdog. It's clear there's some disagreement about what constitutes torture, and the Geneva Conventions and the American military's definition of torture need to be updated, for a number of new scenarios that the Conventions were never intended to cover (ie. paramilitaries and/or terrorist groups that fight without representing a sovereign state).

Agreed. Now, if we had an elected head of state with seperate powers from Parliament, the Greens could run a Ralph Nader type character every election cycle. Even if they never won it would garner a lot more press for their ideas that actually winning a couple of back seats at the far end of the Opposition side. On the same note, fellowtraveller's point also backs up my arguments (in other threads, previously) that proportional representation is a crock that does more harm than good. Well done, traveller. You've helped me address two of my pet causes with one agreement.

Renegade: I didn't find the article you linked to to be too persuasive. I've read other articles (no links, unfortunately) that address and rebut all of the points made in your article, which by the way appears to be about a decade old (not that that matters too much). I'm not trying to persuade you here (if I was, I'd hunt down different opinions for you). I'm just saying that I'm sticking to my positions expressed previously.

If you think that anybody who voted Conservative in the last election is going to vote NDP in this election you're completely delusional. All of the soft Conservative voters fled over the course of the last decade.

Sadly, the only thing that interests me about this topic is how far the CBC will go to bury the Gomery report in support of the Natural Governing Party , should the election be held too soon after the final report is released. Nothing to see here folks! Move along! My prediction: second Liberal minority government is the most likely, with (shudder) a Liberal majority being the second most likely outcome. I base this on the completely scientific opinion polls I carry out periodically with people I know. No one who isn't a complete political junky knows or cares anything about the Gomery report. As far as they're concerned, it's just the Liberals pissing more money away in Quebec. Status quo carries the day.

Sparhawk: Your post fits in with the current debate in the US about abortion law, following the Alito nomination. If a man wants to have kids but his wife wants to have an abortion, there's nothing he can do to stop her. Also, if the woman wants to have kids and the man doesn't but a faulty condom leads to pregnancy anyway, there's nothing he can do to force her to terminate the pregnancy. So women have all of the reproductive rights, but as you've written the responsibility splits fifty-fifty (or worse, from the man's perspective). I have a feeling that the only remedy to this situation is the future adaptation of social custom making the legal perspective obsolete ie. it's considered socially unconsionable for a woman to make multiple live-in boyfriends all responsible for her childrens' welfare, and no self-respecting woman would ever seek a court order along these lines.

1) Meaning, "The following six items are non-negotiable". Quite a demand, coming from a party bargaining from a position of weakness. But then Buzz always did have a certain flare for self-hype and bravado. This will be the second demand to go out the window (immediately following whichever other demand is given up first.) 2) I'm wondering what this really means. My guess is that the union reps want to be consulted on management decisions, thus placing themselves on both sides of the fence. Conflict of interest? 3) This is just silly, and will probably be the first demand to be dropped when push comes to shove. 4) I'm curious about this demand. On the one hand, we have the unions using their leverage in a key financial sector to insinuate themselves into political policies that don't directly relate to their contract, and are therefore beyond the scope of anything they are legitimately concerned with. Which is typical - the unions are as much a force for political activism as they are for labour representation and have been for decades. What I'm curious about is their concern for third world farmers enjoying an international price-fixing scheme, that will almost certainly hurt farm workers (from a labour perspective) in the first world. Fair trade is socialism at it's blinkered best and would naturally have an emotional appeal for union types, but then again the unions are among the most ardent of protectionists when it comes to policies that hurt domestic markets. I guess the CAW is only protectionist when their own members are at risk, and let the rest of the country's working people be damned. 5) This means getting the big three to use all of their economic weight and political pull to have jittery Liberals and their NDP supporters put every taxpayer in the country on the hook for pension plans that we've never been a party to in any way. So the unions use strong-arm tactics to win lavish pensions, the car companies' executives take the easy way out and raid the pension funds to keep everything afloat during recessions, and years later I'm held responsible for paying for golf club membership fees and a new Mercury every two years for a guy who retired making three times as much as I do. On top of whatever he gets out of what I already pay him through the Canada Pension Plan. And the sad part is, this is the demand most likely to be met, because it hurts neither the union nor the company nor the politicians. 6) Typical union demand, and not worth further examination. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. 7) This goes hand-in-glove with demand 5. The government of Canada has a long history of intervening in the finances of troubled companies, including the auto manufacturers. Perhaps as a pre-condition to meeting this demand the government will require the big three to build any future facilities in Quebec, to simplify things.

FYI the writer Coren quoted from the Sun Times was Mark Steyn: Steyn in Sun Times

Not that I agree with cybercoma's stance, but I did find it ironic that the band leading the charge against Napster a few years ago was Metallica, who made millions pandering to teenage rebellion. I wonder how many fans they lost, when it became clear that they were as corporate as any pharma company protecting it's AIDS medicine copyrights.

From boot camps to this... I'm not sure if this was a federal initiative or just here in Manitoba, but there is a proposal to have professional tattoos available in prison for a cost of $5.00. This is to prevent prisoners from getting unsafe, homemade tattoos while they are doing time. It seems to me that they are making a choice if they get an unsafe tattoo - the taxpayer shouldn't be on the hook for it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not to highjack, but this is of exactly the same mind as giving junkies a million dollar shooting gallery in Vancouver, or the current push in that city to legalize prostitution. It's a tacit acknowledgement by people being paid to prevent criminal activity, that the situation is beyond their control.

Renegade: 1) I had a look at both of your sources. The approach in both is scholarly and respectable, but there are so many overlooke variable that haven't been considered that I don't even want to get into it. Suffice it to say that predicting the population a hundred years hence is as difficult and unreliable as predicting the weather (and no, I don't put much stock in the current long range computer prediction models for that either). 2 & 3) I too live close to both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and no, I would swim or fish in Lake Ontario either (though I have done both, recently, in Erie). Ontario has been horribly polluted for many years. However, predictions in the sixties were that the situation was so bad that the lake would be dead by now. It's not; it's actually improving. Environmental regulation, university level education and public awareness are working. Though I'm not a betting man, I'm convinced that the situation will continue to improve as our knowledge of the subtle mechanisms within the biosphere improves, and our techniques for both preventing new pollution and cleaning up old pollution improve. 4) The link you provide also goes on to say, immediately after the part that you've quoted, that human beings of course avoid these boom and bust cycles in population because we alter our environmental circumstances to improve food supply. Also, as you've alluded, human reproduction is not related to food supply - we in the first world have the most and best food, but very few first world countries have enough reproduction to maintain population levels, and rely in immigration instead. Going back to what I said in my earlier post, I believe that coming generations will alter their lifestyles accordingly, without our explicit further interventions. In other words, the amount of energy, effort, money and political capital we currently expend on protection for the environment is sufficient, in my view, because we can always increase it as our knowledge of the situation grows. 5) So your proposal, to avoid future deprevation, is to bring deprevation into the present. Which, by the way, does nothing, absolutely nothing, to address the fact that non-renewable resources will eventually disappear anyway. 6) Interesting. In the first draft of my previous post I asked if you were being facetious. I have no interest at this time in discussing abortion any further in this thread, unless your response to comment 5 above involves culling the herd, so to speak.

It wasn't an attempt to pick a fight. It was an attempt to poke fun at the arbitrary way that the rules are enforced, rules that my post (hopefully) indicates that I disagree with, at least in some cases. I didn't care who posted it or when. But you're right, I should have looked at the posting date.

PocketRocket: Short answer: "we" need torture because the Dems have been remarkly effective at redefining the word to mean everything from electrocution, mutlitation and slow painfull death, on down to dirty looks and mishandling a book, and every form of treatment or mistreatment in between. I don't think the current adminstration is going to agree to any twisted sob-sister take on civil liberties that sees the worst of the worst set free because you accidently peed on their holy books. At Guantanamo the inmates aren't suspected criminals, they're illegal combatants. And even if they the Geneva Convention rules were rewritten to allow them to be treated as bona fide prisoners of war, they still wouldn't need to be charged with anything to be held indefinitely. They can be held until a ceasefire is declared. Do you think Osama et al are going to negotiate a legitimate ceasefire any time soon?

PS, Michael Hardner: It appears you haven't been posting here in a while and have only recently returned. For your future edification, there is an unwritten list of words and phrases which have been deemed intolerable by the forum's administration. One of these phrases, I happen to know from experience, is "loony left". Though it seems fairly innocuous and is used commonly by both the left and right across the web and the MSM, it apparently finds offence with a certain segment of this forum's membership. Just so you know. (I'll probably get a PM just for quoting you.)

You have got to be joking. A guaranteed income awarded by the state for committing crime? How many stores do I have to rob to get that, because I'm soooo there. (You see how a crime prevention scheme that involves handing out cash to criminals kind of falls apart, eh? No? Oh well.) Platitudes about social programs aside, how do you propose to prevent criminal activity without curbing ever civil liberty that a person has?

Renegade: 1) Where do you get the 12 billion figure from? The most realistic projection I've seen based on current demographic trends peaks at 8 billion or so, and then begins to recede. 2) Without specific examples proving that first world pollution is out of control, it's hard for me to agree with your argument. Yes, we pollute, but is our level of polluting uncontrolled or even excessive? Are environmental conditions in the first world degrading? I don't see it happening, and I don't put a lot of stock in environmental alarmism. (I'm waiting with mild excitement for Black Dog's reply to this comment.) 3) As to your third comment: life is and always has been full of trade-offs. However, I think that we (as a species) are in a relatively unique period of transition, and that the problems you've expressed have a lot to do with our abilities and knowledge exceeding our cultural norms and traditions and values. I think every new generation for the next hundred years or so will be continually redefining themselves and their lifestyles away from the terms that defined the preceding generation, until humans have adjusted to a potentially ever increasing collective sets of knowledge and ability. I think we live in a very cool time. 4) Though what you've set appears to be nothing more than common sense, there's nothing in the history of the world that bears your statement out. Though more humans live on the planet than ever before in history, the average caloric intake is also higher than it's ever been. Energy and raw materials consumption is intimately tied to supply - as supply dwindles, price increases and consumption of that commodity drops off in favour of a replacement. Paul Ehrlich predicted in 1971 that the first world would stop sending food aid to India in 1984 because the situation by then would be hopeless. Today India is a next exporter of wheat, and it's economy is exploding into the information age, all with more people than ever. 5) As I mentioned above, overconsumption of resources isn't a factor in a functioning market economy. It only becomes a problem, ironically, in the state controlled economic model favoured by the very people who tend to fret about overconsumption of resources. (Waiting for the inevitable eureka post for this comment.) 6) I assume you mean taxing birth control pills. Abortion is, I believe, fully covered by Provincial healthcare plans in most Provinces, for the very reason of making it available to everyone regardless of financial constraint. I'm all for ending the governments' being fiscally responsible for a procedure which advocates claim is no more ethically challenging than cosmetic surgery. Are you?

A) You don't know the status of the information before it got out, nor do you know how this information was obtained. The existence of these prisons has been discussed since at least last year, so its not really news. C) You're obfuscating. Or talking out of your ass. Probably both. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ...says the guy who's been hyperventilating about the Plame nonesense for two plus years...

PS - I continue to find amusement in posts conflating whatever the writer disagrees with, with Nazism. A bona fide calling card of the lefty mind. Thanks for the larf.

And that black eye is entirely deserved. Blogs have to be taken with a grain of salt, true, but at least they're up front about the opinionated nature of their content and quick to retract or correct mistakes once they're recognized. Your concept of "true journalism" sounds like a fiction invented to keep the established j-school media elite in a position of undeserved authority. But I digress. I feel no further need to defend blogging, as blogs of all shape and hue are all over the 'net, as anyone reading this can find out for themselves. Just go on believing whatever the CBC tells you.

To each their own...I find Starbuck's coffee to be so bitter it tastes like they use iron tailings and gunpowder in the grinds. The only reason it enjoys 'cult status' is that it is 8 dollars a cup...Mind you, some people like liver, too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Perhaps there's something wrong with the water in your area. Also, a regular cup of coffee from Starbucks equivalent in volume to a Tim's large (a grande, I think it is) runs about $2 in my neck of the woods, which is a little more money for a much better cuppa. But I'd settle for a McDonalds cup too. It's better coffee for less money and a shorter drive-thru waiting time.

Bollocks. All of your posts are bluster and bollocks and personal attacks, with no substance regarding the issues at hand. I've gained almost nothing worthwhile from anything you've ever written.