Yaro

Actually it really doesn't have anything to do with politics, its all about economics. We aren't training enough skilled workers here so we need to import them because our education system is dying. When the number of skilled workers goes up the value of skilled workers goes down, its why organizations like the CMA do there best to limit the number of doctors being trained in the specialties (like optometry) so that they can continue to demand the worlds highest salaries.

Actually its not a "comeback" at all, its an honest question. If I thought the way he did I would move. Why stay in a country where the vast majority of people simply don't want to live the way I do and a country that is far more to my liking is very close? Its simply not a logical thing to do.

Just a question and don't take this the wrong way but why are you still in Canada? If you honestly belive that things are that much better right across the border why don't you simply move there?

Sadly, at the end of the day the fact that Harper is a complete idiot is finally catching up with him. Note to future conservatives; 1) if your going to absorb the social conservatives in order to get the vote of the social conservatives then you better be willing to alienate the vast majority of Canadians to do it. 2) When you want to be the capo you have to be able to let go of control, when your in charge you can't have your finger in the drinks of everyone under you. People who reach those positions didn't do so because they wanted some moronic ass looking over there shoulders about everything. 3) if your going to write a paper on economics, actually try studying some economics. That Zero in Three paper was beyond moronic. 4) Don't list Brian Mulrouny as one of your advisers, if you want to take advice from that idiot then at least do it behind closed doors. 5) Don't tell a reporter in an interview that since your views are not the same as mainstream Canadians you will have to lie in order to get into office, I mean seriously what was he thinking?

This is patently false; wages are determined by a market bare system. People are paid the lowest wages they are willing to accept. No it won't, there is absolutely no evidence of this. Wages have fallen in virtually every country that has opened itself to full free trade, often dramatically. Wages in the Mexican economic zone have fallen by almost 50% since the introduction of free trade. Ilo analysis of Mexican wages Real wages didn't rise in the US, Family income did, but that wasn't do to rising wages it was do to a rise in the number of dual income families. Real wages have been falling for a very long time, in fact right now at the height of both the short and long term cycles we have seen the smallest wage growth ever. Bloomberg Article Economic growth is not a zero sum game, however it is only peripherally related to growth in social wealth. It is true that capital flows where the return is the highest, which is to a massive extent where labour is the cheapest, and environmental and worker regulations are at there lowest which is of course what leads to the many abuses which you hear about in places like China. The capital flow into the US over the last decade has been largely from Europe and Asia and holds the form of low return bonds but like any party where the last one out is stuck with the bill/cheque even this has slowed and any mention of a large scale move in either the holding of USD as reserves or the movement of oil producers to the euro are met with great tension among the big houses that run the game of chicken that is the modern US economy. The US does not pay the highest wages in the world, they rank 6th substantially behind a couple of nations. I don't know why you would bring up Japan, they have been one of the most protected markets on earth for the last 30 years and are maybe the worlds most tightly controlled economy hardly a bastion of capitalism. While I don't know if you would describe them as cartels, there are many modern industries that are virtual monopolies. The way this is accomplished isn't by the old method of outright ownership and brood squading competition its through the use of industry lobby groups such as the The American Petroleum Institute. Which is used as a way around claims of collusion. If there isn't high level collusion ask yourself this, why have prices been sky rocketing? Profits are reaching record levels, this is the point at which competition should be kicking in for market share and drive the prices down. That is the essential mechanism of capitalism but in virtually every large industry no real competition exists. Yes we all do know how efficient monopolies are, Fascism (the universally accepted most efficient eco-political system) is essentially a combination of corporations and governments. In the words of the modern father of Fascism (Mussolini) "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power". All of the most efficient governments in the history of humanity have been fascist in nature. I think I understand why you don't realize this though, efficiency is not productivity, it is not ROI, and it is not cost effectiveness. Efficiency is the accomplishment of a task with the consumption of a minimum of resources. Why? It is no single individual’s job to go against his own self interest for a nation of people who are unwilling to fight in its own interest. And what exactly is that misunderstanding? The fact of the matter is that he is absolutely right, we will run out of resources LONG before the entire population of the planet is brought up to first world standards (if that was even the case supported by the evidence). Wages? what wages, why would any of us have jobs? The fact of the matter is that there is nothing that we can do here that they can't do there. They will stop sending goods because we won't have money to buy, and when that happens we will have to start producing for ourselves again and will suffer through those transition pains. You still haven't explained to me the mechanism by which international trade is a benefit beyond those which I have outlined which may very well be the case in the Finland/USSR relationship. Also try to keep in mind that the USSR was in a production war against a population nearly twice the size and with far more wealthy allies. Umm so? Because it was called that, then that’s what it was? Canada and the US both have mixed markets which are the definition of socialist states. I mean Nazi Germany called itself the third Reich, does that mean that it was? Labour markets only become stunted when competition from jurisdictions with lesser standards are allowed to compete. All of the most productive jurisdictions in human history have been places and times with very flat ROIs, there simply isn't any evidence of what you suggest. It’s also funny that everyone keeps saying that there is no return, that international competition is a necessity in the modern world but nobody will say why exactly. Chile, Malaysia, and Ethiopia three of the world’s best success stories from the third world in the last 4 decades all became successes after raising significant barriers to outside trade. This is only relevant of course if you have no interest in sovereignty which completely invalidates the notion of international free trade without a common social balance. and this John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hitman Will explain why and how the World Bank and IMF is the main weapon that the US has used to maintain an impoverished third world. One of the most important books ever written. And if you don't believe me, read the names on the back. As I said above through industry groups, these groups are the method of the modern monopoly and there primary weapon is the lobby. Markets do not create wealth, they create the illusion of wealth. When the government prints money they are not creating wealth they are increasing the rate of exchange between wealth and its representative; i.e. money. The US government has been using the lag time that it takes for the markets to correct for this change to help to reaffirm the strength of the US economy.

Are you seriously asking me whether I want to live in a fair and just society? Because that’s what you're saying you are against, on a scale with heredity at one end and merit at the other, yes I am WAY over on the merit side. Well I would love to here the benefits of trade, I am fairly well educated on the subject and have never actually heard someone try to make an efficiency argument for the benefits of trade outside what I have outlined (which was by the way the classical argument of free trade). I also never argued that free trade was in and of itself a bad thing, but free trade without a common agreement on social structure and taxation doesn't lead to efficiency which is the only way to increase social wealth or NEW, as opposed the oft silly GDP statistic. Why do people lump socialism with communism all the time, every country on earth that has worked for more then a decade without total collapse has been socialist (colloquially speaking). The US/Canada/Europe/Japan/Australia/China/Russia/India every single country of import on earth is socialist, clearly its not that ineffective.

Social mobility is one of the lowest in the first world. The notion that the US isn't a class-based society is utterly ludicrous, the odds of someone who is poor becoming wealthy in the US is miniscule. LSE Study No it doesn't, this is the pipe dream that some keep trying to sell but the notion that somehow north America will keep the most highly mobile job sets (which are the highest paying ones) while maintaining a higher standard of living is ridiculous with no logical basis. Jobs will move to where they will be preformed most cheaply, that is India/Russia/China. It always makes me laugh when I hear this idea that somehow China and India will be more then happy to keep supplying North America with a steady flow of engineers instead of employing them at home. What possible reason would someone educated in one of the worlds top technical schools (many of which are in those 3 countries) have for wanting to come to an increasingly economically depressed north America? It makes absolutely no sense. Something else that runs counter to this argument is the rather farcical notion that the inefficiency of this system would be supported by corporations with absolutely no reason to support it in a free trade environment. Only someone who has never moved in the circles that would care (and they very much do care) would say this. Do you know what the social definition of being "society class" is? Its not having done manual labour for 3 generations. That "society" has grown substantially over the last 25 years. In addition family fortunes almost never fall, that’s part of the problem a bullet proof aristocracy. This is the thing, how exactly are people going to become ludicrously wealthy trading with China? What exactly is China going to want that they can't make cheaper locally? It’s very painful to watch sometimes when people start talking about the nature of free trade and its advantages. Free trade has 2 advantages: 1) Logistical optimization, I could go into a long-winded explanation about why and how free trade allows a more efficient distribution model but that’s rather pointless. 2) Population Distribution Optimization, in short people migrating towards natural resources which in the modern world is the only source of actual competitive advantage. At the end of the day the only way for society to actually become wealthier is to make efficiency gains. Free trade in the current world environment isn't about efficiency as the current nation vs. nation competition of subsidizations insure that less wealth then ever will be generated but it will be more concentrated. This has of course all be obfuscated by the fact that huge trade deficits and massive investment in china has ensured that a significant portion of North Americans have benefited (investors) on the backs of the actual working population. Simply put international free trade with no agreement on taxation/social practices has thrown the economy out of wake (SROI vs. SROL). Of course anyone with any vision knows that this can't go on forever since logistical costs are sky rocketing the kind of overseas trade that we do know with China will become even less practical even more quickly so once again domestic manufacturing will have to take over to pick up all of that slack and the decade of pain we went through in the 90s to adjust our economy to the current model will once again have to undergo a major shift back to where we were 20 years ago. Of course by then we will heavily indebted to China with no real way of paying off that debt but to export goods at extraordinarily low prices or continue to pay the debt servicing fees. This of course ignores the very significant fact that both domestic individual debt has never been so high and that the US's national debt and growing social debt continue to fuel what will most assuredly be quite the collapse. Regardless this article is clearly the work of an economics retard, China is a country of 1.5 billion people whose social structure has allowed them to overtake a country of 32 million in trade despite our location. Who really cares? The US isn't China's biggest trading partner the EU is followed by Japan. If we are worried about our trade circumstances it should be our reletive lack of trade with the EU and our trade deficit with China.

Its not pollution, it’s the fact that oil prices aren't falling ever. Not significantly anyways. In a free enterprise system the only real motivation for change is money, people won't do it for pollution, they won't do it for efficiency, people won't look past there nose. I know the idea of reducing driving sucks, it sucks for me to, I don't live downtown I live 30 minutes out of downtown and I will drive my car for a very long time still but economics will determine the viability of that, and I don't see a point in artificially delaying that by reducing taxes. We can keep reducing taxes to nothing all we are doing is delaying for a very short time the issue of switching over to other systems. Your son (depending on his age) may very well NEVER drive a pure gas car, Europeans already pay more then 2 US per litre, and in some parts of Japan its more then 5 US per litre. This is simply the new reality, were going to use up the oil (regardless of how much there turns out to be) very very quickly. Hell I am all for reducing the taxes on oil if the government is willing to actually nationalize a significant portion of our oil reserves, in this circumstance it would give us a huge competitive advantage and makes good economic sense but simply reducing the gas taxes for very temporary relief? It’s pointless, and we have to keep in mind we still have a 600 billion dollar deficit.

I never said I pulled the number out of my ass, but there have been dozens of estimates all over the map. But feel free to use the official US government number of 15 million. Those results in a 5% margin of productivity, easily enough to overcome any US "advantage in productivity". Oops I see I put 25 million as the lowest estimate I have seen, I meant 15 (2004 figures, which is why I came up with 30). As for the unemployment numbers, there have been dozens of very good papers written on the changes in the way which the US has changed the way they calculate the unemployment %. Real Unemployment Like I said, the US has made a couple of dozen changes over the last 25 years to make the US unemployment figure look much lower then it is. If calculated using the same system that Canada uses, it’s around 9 %(U-5 close approximate) and if calculated the way most of Europe does it, its closer to 10.5 %(U-6). 1995 changes PDF But if you want to hear it directly from the mouth of one of the best statisticians the US has ever produced and the former head of the BLS herself: Janet Norwood Interview Actually, ironically, the largest debts in US history were under Reagan in the 80s. It’s ironic because nobody spent more time pushing a balanced budget amendment and nobody had bigger deficits. But you are right that the current administration in all practical ways has larger deficits. Not that I want to turn this into a political thing, but it was the very hard right that spent like a drunken sailor in every one of these countries, it was Regan in the US and Mulroney in Canada that virtually destroyed those respective economies. Japans problems have allot more to do with there resource-population issues and there corrupt banking system, neither of which could reasonably be attributed to there government as the geography is out of everyone’s hands and there banking system was set up by the US. No it wasn't pent up consumer demand, if you remember correctly there was a rather severe depression in the early 60's. JFK cut taxes rather dramatically, this helped to spur the economy until the baby boomers started entering the workforce which created quite possibly the largest bulge in employment age individuals in history, and this of course ballooned the economy and is largely the origins of the asinine supply side ideology. But it should be noted that unlike the current US administration JFK raised the taxes 4 years after he lowered them in 62 (I think it was) in order to start paying off the card as you say. This is actually one of the most important points in understanding the current booms stability (for now). Most of the governments of the west, the US primarily, have been doing everything in there power to drive social value through the roof. Extending patents well beyond there natural lifespan, borrowing against there status as the worlds reserve bankers and the oil standard by printing money at an insane pace, using interest rates to fuel consumer debt... All these things create the artificial appearance of value; they give people faith in the value of what they own. This creates of course a use/desire for all that wealth they have created, they have essentially created the demand that they are filling only with paper and dreams. When this one pops its going to be a dozy. I also think there’s many who have the misconception that cost effectiveness = efficiency, it doesn't. Let’s take an example of a TV produced in China, now if it takes a total of 25 man hours a resource value index of 100 to create this TV then that is the production value of that TV. This production value is the same whether produced in China or the US or Canada, productivity numbers vary to a minimal degree next to logistical costs. So now you have a TV in China which has to reach its marketplace in North America to realize its economic value. This means that you now have the logistical cost and efficiency issues. If a TV is produced in China and has to be shipped across the ocean, then we would have to assign a value to the labour and resource value required to get it to north America, lets say that the labour value is 1 hour per TV, and lets assign the resource cost (oil mainly) at 25, we now have a circumstance where the cost can and will be lower then a TV produced in the US but before it is delivered to you in your home it has seen a significant hit in its efficiency to get it to you. This is to a large extent the cause of productivity issues and why there is any advantage at all in the US productivity numbers (despite a significant slave labour population) because the fact of the matter is that at the end of the day producing closer to your consumer with equal efficiency is more efficient even if its not cheaper. Some day when it’s no longer cost effective to produce goods in china and ship them over here we are going to be left with a devastated manufacturing industry and little to no base from which to build one. The saddest thing is that we have every advantage considering we are the most heavily resource valued population on earth and we further reduce our efficiency numbers by actually shipping those resources out of the country. Although I am a little tired so I don't know if that was clear.

It’s not unknown, although I have seen estimates as high as 45 million, I have never seen an estimate lower then 25, so I used 30. There are by most estimates 20 million illegal Latinos, and a very significant number of Chinese and Koreans. The US government has continuously underestimated the illegal population for domestic political reasons (its just about the hottest topic in the US for politicians, but that source of extremely cheap labour helps to keep the labour market so liquid-and helps in there ongoing deception concerning there completely false unemployment rate). This adds a great deal to the US productivity numbers. The fact is that productivity numbers are severely skewed by a number of issues, and like most statistics released by governments they is heavily manipulated.

Obviously you misunderstood me, of course we are there partially for combat, part of peace keeping is combat. I know where not there to hand out candy. How was the military scapegoated for any of that? The Somalia inquiry? Are you kidding me? They tortured and shot a kid? Rwanda was never even brought up in reference the military and the planes were never blamed on the military. I think you might be hypersensitive, as a citizen I never saw those issues blamed on the military as a whole and certainly didn't see them as military issues. Nation building is not part of the peace keeping process, nation building is completely separate. Countries build themselves; there not build by foreign nations. And we will never wipe out the Taliban to the last man, we don't have anywhere near the manpower and the geography makes it impossible. As for leaving a mess, the US is building a number of bases there; surely they will be able to keep the peace. Dragoons are about the way they are used, Black Watch was used as a Dragoon regiment, shock troopers like the rest of the 2nd class non brits. And no I’m not forgetting the Polish and Americans, the Americans were always under there own command and had there own distinct regiments. The polishes were never part of Black Watch as that was a "commonwealth" unit. Yes and I restated my position, with an apology. I never thought they were in the majority but that doesn't change the fact that they are a significant minority and that part of the training has the goal of creating an anti social individual. Clearly you are being obstreperous, you know as well as I do that nothing that I said about soldiers or the goals of there training is untrue. Once again you seem bound and determined to be insulted. Sociopaths are not psychopaths, psychopaths revel in the suffering of others, and sociopaths are ambivalent to it. Sociopaths tend to be calm, cool, calculating, everything that a good soldier aspires to.

The government shouldn't do anything; high gas prices are an incentive to alter behavior. This behavior needs to be changed if not now then in very short order, if the high gas prices start a slow shift towards this new behavior today why change it knowing that the more dramatic shift that would have to happen down the road would be even worse?

The problem with the those numbers is they don't take into account a 30 million person slave labour pool that count towards productivity results but not towards population count.

In a rather definitive sense socialism is the only system that has ever worked. The debate is rather to what extent a nation and by what method a society should decide between private and public control. I personally usually let it fall to the efficiency standard.

Can we grow up a little? This thread is a rather sad display. While I don't support the notion of direct GAI, I would like to see alot more incentive to automation and a serious reduction in the outflow raw resources. Lets start using our low population to our own advantage, I am thinking we should be on the forefront of automated weaponry.

So I suppose you would be upset if a dual US/Canadian citizen was chosen? Thats quite a leap there batman, because its been done once it is now the defacto standard?

I disagree, every release by the government has at one time or another passed my desk and I have never seen a statement, which suggested his position, was the national one. Not that I would argue it wasn't the position behind closed doors, only that it wasn't there announced position. I have never seen the Canadian government use the military as a scapegoat. Neglected yes, abused yes, used as a scapegoat no. Of course there were press releases but at no point was a statement made as to nation building, a Cyprus like commitment to a country with a very violent history with a population nearly as big as our own. No Canadians, like every other group of people on the planet have their decision-making abilities adversely affected by rhetoric and propaganda. It doesn't behoove any of us to encourage that behavior. And I don't think that anyone was ever under the impression that terrorists were getting coddled. Who says they don't have a problem? I would in fact bet money that they do, although making it public would have been unnecessarily divisive. I am very sure that a request was made of the general to tone down the rhetoric. If you believe that something I have said is rhetoric, then I would ask that you point it out. I hardly consider myself above the fray. Black Watch as it pertains to WW2, was an amalgamation of Scotish/Irish/Canadian/Austrailian troops. Like most not British units black watch was considered a "dragoon" regiment. WW2's black watch had its roots in the Scottish unit however. I did miswrite before however in that what I intended to say was that the notoriety that this unit enjoyed came primarily from the actions of a group of sask. pig farmers. There were plenty of famous units in WW2, and there were certainly plenty of famous companies, however no regiment in the entire war created as much fear as black watch. I will have to try to find the book that was the source of that particular historical gem however. While I could point out that by clinical definition it makes you both prone to violence and definably anti-social but that’s not what I meant. I certainly believe that most soldiers could kill without thought but not without regret. But you would be hard pressed to suggest that there isn't a significant minority that would feel little to no regret, which is the basis of sociopath logy, which is most certainly an anti social behavior. Yes because god knows military recruiters are well known for telling the whole story. Regardless soldiers are trained to react in a certain way it has nothing to do with a lack of humanity or any kind of rage, the ability to set aside empathy in order to perform the duties of a soldier is a cornerstone of military training, that is by definition sociopath behavior-the lack of ability to empathize. Rwanda was ethnic cleansing, it was on an entirely different scale then every terrorist attack in the last 100 years combined. Imagine 911 happing every day for 150 days straight and maybe you will start to understand why Rwanda is very very different then Afghanistan. This statement is patently false, the origins of OBL and many of the senior members of "al qaeda" were trained and equipped by the CIA, the CIA used profits from the sale of Afghani drugs to fund many of there other operations and the methods used in fighting by the Taliban fighters are most certainly very similar to the ones used against us today. Afghanistan is a country of 30 million people(by comparison Iraq has 26 million), 18,000 troops in a country that size is most certainly abandoning the operation. I really don't think that most people understand the size of the task in Afghanistan, people seem to have this picture of Afghanistan as this tiny country that can't muster a significant long-term resistance when that is anything but the truth. In many ways it is much like Vietnam, except where the Vietnamese had the Chinese border to run to the Afghani’s have the Pakistani border to run to.

I have been to both countries, I am aware of the cultural issues. There relationship is not unlike the one we have with the US. The Finns fought against a direct aggressor, they were no aggressive against Nazi Germany then the Swedes were. The fact of the matter is that Germany at the time was in pretty fair proportion to the US, a power on a different scale then Sweden or all of the Nordic countries combined. Not at all, it was an invasion that the Canadian government was very much against, it was an extremely aggressive empire building exercise. But if you prefer I would point to the US occupation of the Philippines as another example. The fact of the matter is that Canada could take no practical position to defend either Vietnam or the Philippines regardless of political will. The US is about survival of the fittest, it’s practically there national motto. Your problem is that you take that as some sort of insult. Survival of the fittest is the society that most Americans choose for themselves, there’s nothing innately wrong about that. I would also point out that Europe has higher social mobility then the US which is fairly stunning when you consider the age of there respective societies. Education is handled very differently in Europe then it is here, what we would call trades education is taken fairly seriously there. It would not count as a university education but it would certainly result in a more practically educated society. It should also be noted that by your own source Finland and Norway rank 6th and 7th in the world, that’s hardly a sign of poor performance. Then taking into account our heavily biased immigration policy (biased towards the educated) and the number of international students we have (one of the highest ratios in the world) combined with a traditionally heavy emphasis on education and it’s hardly surprising that we have the numbers fairly heavily weighted in our favor. Anyone who qualifies to standards lower then the ones required of me (the cutoff for my course was a 93% high school average) can get into university in Finland. Not all students choose to go to university because much like us they require more trades people and less university educated people. Just as note here to finish up, I am not arguing for Mirrors position, there is nothing innately right or wrong about the US system or the Finish system so long as it enjoys the support of a well-informed electorate.

Exactly, I mean whats the big fuss about. If its in our best interest to do so then lets do it, if its not then lets not. Why does anything else matter?

The court has nothing to do with lawmaking. and the system that you propose will change that alot fast then the status quo has. The objective is to have non partisan justices who rule according to the principles there supposed to and the current system has accomplished that.

This is worth reading twice.

Finland and Sweden are separate countries, I think you know that but that’s not how you made it sound. Sweden is a country of 8.5 million people, Finland is a country of 5.5 million, and Norway is a country of 5 million. That’s a total of 19 million. Your statement as to what these tiny nations should have done in the face of German aggression is as stupid as asking why we didn't stop the US from going into Vietnam. What does the fact that Norway had a fascist party and its leader was executed have to do with absolutely anything? What does the fact that two provinces of two different countries not being able to make war on each other without dragging in both nations have to do with the relationships between individual countries in Europe? And again how the hell is our reaction to the 911 even remotely relevant on this topic? Not that I am particularly advocating either system, but your post could be used in a textbook as the definition of literal tripe. I agree, however I think the solution is in simply not funding education without some guarantee of return from the student.

I agree, but that is anti democratic. I believe that the provinces should have more power, they should have power over most issues that aren't of national importance or about insuring that the basic rights guaranteed in the constitution aren't abridged. States should have full control over medical care, education, laws not contradictory to the constitution, Tariffs, etc... Some of those issues would probably be best handled by some sort of national agreement between states but shouldn't be strictly federal issues. Sooner or later people are going to have to understand that in a democracy the MAJORITY rules, whether that majority lives in Alberta or Ontario. And BTW I live in Vancouver. I think the notion of local representation on federal issues is a bad one, it conflicts with the local representation from provincial governments. In some countries what happens is that parties have a list of what order politicians will be elected in. After the popular totals are added up it is divided by the number of representatives that will be elected and then the lists are consulted as to which parties have enough votes for how many candidates. There is also a mixed system that would be best for provincial politics, it maintains the local representation while providing an adjustment for the popular vote. This system is also sometimes called a partial list. For example, if there was a vote in a province and you had 31 seats apportioned to party A, 22 to party B, and 13 to party C you would add up all the votes that counted towards those candidates as a portion of the popular vote. Once you had that representation counted you would look at all the remainder votes, then you would consult lists for those remaining votes. Essentially you would wind up with a number of officials that represent local constituents and a number that wouldn't. This also allows for particularly good candidates to be assured a seat if they lose out to another particularly good candidate simply because there in the same riding. I know it hasn't bee, it’s just the way that I think it should be.

Why Electoral College? The electoral collage is at its base a perversion of the democratic principle. 1 man, 1 vote. I think the real problem here is that we view federal elections through the lens of local representation. Federal politics should be about the nation as a whole, provincial politics (and all the powers that should flow to them) should be about local representation. Federally it should be popular vote with lists. Provincially it should be mixed popular vote where popular vote determines the base for each district and then the remaining uncounted votes(votes for losing candidates) are used to determine a per list remainder of representatives.

Sigh, Wahhabism in the modern use was based on the teachings of a Muhammad ibn Abd, who was educated by his father on the Koran in the 1710's. After having spent many of his early years he under this religious tutelage, and purportedly having memorized the Koran verbatim by the age of 9 he moved to Bashra where he began his higher education. These are the basic tenants of Wahhabism as taught by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab. One could call it the origins of modern fundamentalist Islam. Prohibitions No other object for worship than God Holy men or women must not be used to win favours from God No other name than the names of Allah may enter a prayer No smoking of tobacco No shaving of beard No abusive language Rosaries are forbidden Mosques must be built without minarets and all forms of ornaments Commandments All men must attend public prayer, salat Alms, zakat, must be paid from all income Butchers slaughtering animals according to halal must have their life styles scrutinized. It is not sufficient that they perform the basic rituals correctly You will however notice that there isn't any hint of violence in the ideology. This is part of the reason why many of not most scholars believe that calling the modern fundamentalist movement wahhabism in relation to acts of violence is not wholly accurate and indeed may not even be remotely accurate. While in Medina Muhammad ibn Abd took on 2 students, the important one for this discussion is Muhammad Hayat Sindhi. Hayat Sindhi was the source of the first changes in the nature of what we could call the fundamentalists. He is the man who to some extent advocated Jihad in order to maintain the purity of there regions. It should however be noted that the translation of Jihad has been warped a great deal in the west. The literal translation and the one under which Hayat Sindhi laboured under was probably "holy struggle" which only included military and violent means in the most extreme of circumstances. It was Hayat Sindhi who was the first to incorporate the western ideals into his methodology. In particular it was contact with a pair of British ambassadors, whose names escape me at the moment that introduced Hayat Sindhi to the politics of the western courts. It was at this point that the modern ideology of wahhabism was born, a combination of Muslim fundamentalism paired with western political pragmatism. It should be noted at this point that this was also the time of the birth of the alternate mu-whabism (which is incidentally the name they all use for themselves-wahhabist is considered somewhat of an insult) line of thought that resulted in the modern largely isolationist thinking of most mu-wahhabists (they collect in groups of about a thousand and live rather cult like lives cloistered away from the general population). Hayat Sindhi taught a somewhat more stern form of fundamentalism which was based largely upon the right of the aristocracy of the time to rule regardless of the justification. He had very much a "unto Caesar what is Caesars" attitude, he viewed everything with a great deal of religious fervor, through the eyes of the Koran. It was also at this point that Hayat Sindhi introduced the notion of religion as the overriding factor in law and government. He had a rather contradictory philosophy that the government had no right to rule, and that the people had no right to descent (which as I am sure you are aware is the central principle of modern wahhabian political thought). You may also by now be seeing some of the influences of British politics of the day and perhaps a certain Italian politician. It was indeed the philosophy of the British at the time which was that the world was defacto British territory. Diplomats were under strict orders to create provinces that could in no way challenge the British throne. It was considered a matter of time and resources before the British ruled the world in a more direct manner. Incidentally this was also the time when the bankers in Germany, England, and France (all controlled by the same family) started to, in a serious way, influence pedal in third world nations to create the private centralized banks. This was one of the agreements that Hayat Sindhi made with his British contacts, that he would create a stable, submissive population. Quite frankly though this is far to large a subject for me to cover here, my guess is that you thought by reading wiki or some equal vapid source that you understood the origins of wahhabism, that the idea that some people might actually read a book or bother to ask questions never occurred to you. Regardless of the ideological attacks that have become the nature of this thread, my point is more then made. There is no basis upon which to state in any reasonable way that any of the three related religions can claim to be any more peaceful then the others.