dialamah

Yes, the price of real estate is pretty high in Vancouver. Between March 2004 and April 2005, 4700 people registered with insight and there were 2,200 referrals to treatment. There were 273 overdoses, and no deaths. Another study followed 1000 Insite users for 15 months. 185 people entered into detox programs; those who went to Insite at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enter into detox than those who used Insite less often. In the year following Insite's opening, use of detox facilities increased by over 30%. Insite clients who enrolled into detox programs were 1.6 times more likely to follow through into a methadone or other addiction treatment. Edited to add link: http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca/images/Documents/insite_report-eng.pdf

I'm going to go with what the people who are actually there think is happening and they seem to think it's related to climate change.

Possibly you didn't read the links, which pointed out that while Tuvalu isn't "sinking" right now, there are other effects of climate change that are already impacting them. I'm happy to agree that Florida will be one of the first places to be underwater.

Well, I'll continue to hope you are indeed correct.

It seems he was only 'at war' for 10 years of his life, so for about 50 years he wasn't at war. It seems war happened more because he and his followers were persecuted to the point where in order to survive, they began raiding caravans, which led to retaliation, which led to more retaliation, which led to war. Or something like that. In any case, it seems doubtful that prophet Muhammed was anything like ISIS. ISIS has nothing to do with what Islam teaches as a religion, just as people who commit mass murders "because God told them to" have anything to do with what Christianity teaches.

When scientists develop a theory, and when that theory predicts what happens, I would call that pretty plausible. http://www.livescience.com/25367-first-ipcc-climate-report-accurate.html http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative/ But as I said previously, I hope you and others who think this is all false or won't be ultimately catastrophic are right and I'm wrong. I've been comforted reading stuff put out by scientists claiming it's all an overblown crisis - but unfortunately, their arguments and conclusions are less persuasive to me than the other side. But I'll certainly continue to hope I'm on the wrong side of belief this time.

Yes, your first source is incomplete as far as identifying the effects climate change has been having on Tuvalu. Luckily, your second source fills in some of the blanks. From your second source: Here's another viewpoint, which I think looks at both sides rather fairly. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/will-tuvalu-disappear-beneath-the-sea-180940704/?page=1 And another article which talks about how climate change is affecting Tuvalu and the Maldivies now; it includes a lot of quotes from Kench: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150213-tuvalu-sopoaga-kench-kiribati-maldives-cyclone-marshall-islands/

Can you provide sources for the claim that increasing taxes results in lower charitable donations? I looked, and couldn't find anything. Again, can you provide sources proving that decreasing/eliminating poverty destroys society? This doesn't mean "equalization" of all segments of society; it merely means that people are not living in poverty - ie: homeless, or living in substandard housing, without heat/water/plumbing, struggling to find enough to eat, eating mostly junk food because real food is too expensive. No other economic class would be eliminated. This type of thinking dismisses the reality of life for many people. You are so full of good advice, without apparently any real concept that sometimes real life just isn't that accommodating. I've known really hard workers, reliable and dedicated employees who have been injured early in their career, and now live in constant pain -- on $906 per month here in BC. I've known people who've trained for an up and coming trade - and then discovered that actually, all the forecasts were wrong and there's no market for their skills - so now they've wasted time/money, and are still among the working poor. A woman who was married, had kids - and then hubby emptied the bank account and left, she's been left high and dry - she's been trying for three years to get a job and get off welfare, but so far nobody has been interested in hiring her. In your dismissive attitude, you blame people who do try to be self-supporting, who work hard when they can, who don't waste money - because they have none to waste - and are still not getting ahead. You seem to want to punish them because you were successful and you think they should be too.

Who's money should they be spending? Although when you think about it, they are spending *their* money, since it's money they collected through taxation. We do have to contribute, so it's not exactly 'our' money - without taxation, I suppose we'd be a lot worse off.

Not true. http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow/top-10-places-already-affected-by-climate-change/ http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/12/tuvalu_that_sin_1.html http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/29/1 http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-locations/debilt-the-netherlands.html http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/06/opinions/sutter-two-degrees-marshall-islands/ I admit, I'm often comforted by reading dissenting opinions by 'experts' that climate change is normal, that it's not that bad, that it's just 'alarmist nonsense', so I can understand people clinging to that - who wants to imagine that the entire human race could be essentially extinct in just a few generations? So I understand why people ignore the Tuvalu, and Northern communities who are already moving due to rising sea levels and melting ice, the videos of huge swaths of ice falling off glaciers, the wilder weather around the world, the poor Bangladeshi who have to keep moving a few feet up the beach every year, as the water laps at their feet. Its not affecting us in the West, and stuff like that always happens, right? It's very comforting to think that way, I agree. And in a few more decades, as the low lying areas become flooded and people begin moving in mass numbers to 'safe' places, our worry about 25,000 Syrian refugess will be laughable. Anyway, as much as it grieves me, I suspect we're not going to do enough about it quickly enough - too many people prefer to be comforted than realistic.

I certainly agree that greater local voice is rarely given the consideration it deserves, and local communities are worse off for it. Even if we could implement a system where local authorities have final say in the economic development, I'm not sure how that would result in 'rural-folk not being subsidized by 'urban-folk'. I would also like to note that the rural areas aren't a single voice, either. A few years ago in the rural area I grew up, there was a proposal for economic development that had some risks of negative environmental effects. My family who still lives there were much more interested in the economic aspects of the proposal than the environmental risks. It seemed to me that local opinion was that if some large company wanted to come in and create jobs and growth, that was fine and dandy. Local people who questioned the long term effects were given pretty short shrift.

Nope, I did not ask him. The point is that its a pretty prevalent belief, and for them, the evidence is pretty compelling. Not going to get into that argument with him, because he's a lot more in tune with that area of the world than I am, and is more likely to be correct than I am.

As I said, who knows what Sisi might ultimately do, but at the moment there is a constitution that requires a full democracy be set up and details the steps for doing so. So far, Sisi has championed the constitution in this regard, and proceeded along it's requirements. When my sister said to me that not living there, I couldn't presume to judge Sisi's more extreme actions, she may have had a point. She felt safer when Sisi cracked down on elements he felt were contributing to in-country instability. I don't agree with Sisi's actions in the context of a fully functioning and peaceful democracy, but perhaps in the context of transitioning and with the extreme unrest in the region, my sister is more correct in saying that allowing extremist groups to exist and have a voice is a mistake. BIL is well aware of Mubarek's 'democracy'; as he said, "I don't need to vote, Mubarek already knows who I'm going to vote for". Perhaps he's being naive with Sisi, but he really seems to believe it will happen. Also, just because the democracy was 'tribal', doesn't mean it can't work on a bigger scale. And it's not really the West's job to 'transfer' democracy to them; it is their job to decide they want it and work it out from there, in whatever form works the best for them. Tunisia has done it, and it looks like Egypt is at least trying. Afghanistan appears to also have had success at least in terms of electing a president, though how well the country has recovered is debatable. Perhaps SIsi is looking at all these elements and has decided that a strong military oversight is required to ensure the democracy doesn't fail in its early stages. I can appreciate your tendency to skepticism, but it is starting to look to me as if you are dismissing any signs of progress and effort, preferring instead to believe that democracy cannot happen due to some failing of the people in the region. I can agree that it may not happen but certainly not because people don't want peace and democracy, or don't know what peace and democracy mean.

I agree that its the extremism that must be fought, but even in my conversation with a moderate Muslim from a relatively stable country, he said "The US has created these extremists". If even moderate Muslims think Western intervention is making the situation worse, perhaps that's a message we should take seriously. Although having let the genie out of the bottle, so to speak, I can't see suddenly just everybody packing up and leaving, but surely there is a better option than bombs and drones. Especially when those bombs and drones kill non-combatants.

Not saying you are wrong, since people are notoriously unwilling to give up power, but this is what my brother-in-law tells me. Egypt's Constitution sets out the process for transitioning to a fully democratic elected government through the following steps. 1. Elections are held to elect a parliament (currently half way through those elections). 2. Sisi and the parliament agree on who makes up the government. Parliament can accept or reject Sisi's recommendations 3. The newly-formed government then has 15 days to review any laws Sisi has enacted while in power, and presumably scrap them or keep them. 4. By law, Sisi must step down within 8 years of the first elected parliament, which means 2023. The parliament can also ask him to step down earlier, though it's not clear if he can refuse. Knowing a little bit about how Egyptians think, I doubt the parliament will ask that of him. So my brother-in-law expects there to be a fully elected government in power within 10 years, with elections held every four years. Tunisia did it, and so lets hope Egypt can follow suit.

I guess we'll be subsidizing rural folk then, and honestly, I don't have a problem with that. But still curious: say we decided to allocate some resources back to 'rural folk'. Exactly how would that work? I grew up in a rural area myself, and fail to see how my family - or even my family and all our neighbors - could have effectively logged the area. Sure, we could have cut down trees and maybe milled them for local use and sent some to the lower mainland, but I don't see that being as economically advantageous as having employment available in the local forest industry. I am honestly curious as to how you see that working.

My BIL got back to me right after I finished the post above, and mentioned that voting and elections were mandated by the Prophet in the 14th century. A google search brought up this site: http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.org/publications/articles/51-democracy-according-to-traditional-islamic-sources.html Possibly not looking quite the same as Western democracy, but obviously Islam does have a concept of democracy.

I also asked a Muslim friend, and here's what he said about the concept of peace in Islam: He also provided me with a couple of You-Tube links for more information. Here's a link to the shorter one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMbAJPfMjC8. This is about 10 minutes long, and points out that verses in Quran about violence relates to historical events, and is not intended as direction for the current world. People who take it as such are wrong. The other one is over an hour long, and is very much like any religious service I've ever heard. But it focuses on all the ways in which peace is an integral part of Islam. The lecturer also mentions that 'submission' to Islam is submission to peace, because Allah is the owner of peace. I asked him about the concept and/or word for democracy in Islam, and he said: Which is kind of what we do when we elect leaders, I suppose. My BIL is currently in Saudi working, not sure if he's sleeping right now or what, let me know if you are interested in hearing more, though maybe in PM, since this is getting rather far afield of the thread topic, I think.

I suppose it's possible he earned $40,000 a year while attending university full-time, though one wonders how he did it. This article has some ideas on how it can be done, including getting as many scholarships as possible - though someone has to have some particular talent or smarts for scholarships, do they not? There's also illicit drug trade, or other illegal activities that can help someone make lots of money though generally those sorts of people tend to be more victims of their "careers" than success stories. But its hard to come up with a scenario where someone makes $40,000 a year by living frugally and working part-time at the kinds of jobs university students usually come up with. And given AP's complete unwillingness to provide any info, I'd have to call BS too. Especially as he's already demonstrated he's not above lying to "prove" his argument.

I don't really understand this. If you don't have a reasonable means of accessing a resource, this suggests to me that you don't 'own' the resource any more than I (a "city-folk") does since I don't have a reasonable means of accessing this resource either. Presumably, either the government or a corporation has means of accessing this 'resource', which again has very little to do with 'city-folk'. I fail to see why this means I should pay your taxes? Can you be a little more clear about what you are trying to say?

By your logic, then, the 'middle-class' is *entitled* to the tax break that is coming their way. So why is it so wrong to you that other people should feel "entitled" to tax breaks the government is giving them?

Admittedly, I get my information such as it is from my Egyptian brother-in-law, who is Muslim and speaks Arabic. I am going to have to ask him what the "moderate" Islamic belief around freedom and democracy is, and if there are Arabic words for those concepts. He also seems quite happy with Sisi, actually compared him to Trudeau today. My sister voted the day before we held elections here, it's a first round but secular "For the Love of Egypt" party won out over the Islamist "Al Nour" party. My impression from my brother-in-law and sister is that they expect to be having free elections and a full democracy, that Sisi is guiding them toward that eventually, but that in the meantime he has to maintain tight control to keep the Brotherhood from gaining power and because of ISIS. I suppose only time will tell how dedicated Sisi is to the goal of democracy.

Huh? Islam is not a language, so it doesn't have words for anything. Given the Arab spring, it seems pretty unlikely that there aren't words for 'freedom' and 'democracy' in any of the languages in that region. So, this doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. But I agree that to expect non-democratic countries to turn into a Western style democracy is not realistic, and especially after being invaded and occupied. Though on a more positive note, in recent elections in Egypt, the secular candidate beat out the Islamic candidate in their first round of voting.

The only entitlement I see is from people who claim to be earning good money, all butt-hurt because someone else - who makes less money - is going to get a tax break too. Your own sense of entitlement simply because you 'make more money" is pretty stunning. Oh, and your whole shtick about how you won't 'donate to charity' cause of tax changes - well, if you are so dumb as to give up the tax deductions for charity to protest a tax change that actually benefits you more than it benefits someone like me - have at it. Seems like a classic "cut off your nose to spite your face" response.

I get stressed, tired and sometimes depressed trying to be 'social' for too long a time, though in the short term people often mistake me for gregarious and charming. Thanks for putting a bit of a 'human' face on Harper, though. If his real personality shines through one-on-one, or in small groups, much better than it did in public/on camera, it may help explain how he became leader and maintained it for so long within his party. Doesn't explain some of his policies, though.