AndrewL

Geez, enough with the stupid partisan hackery. Could you please explain the disappearance of the old growth forest from the US? Who do you think is practicing deforestation in poor countries? Who own the corporations? Who is buying the product? Well, as we speak... MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Hunters in Russia's Far East have shot and killed one of the last seven surviving female Amur leopards living in the wild, WWF said on Monday, driving the species even closer to extinction. Last week environmentalists said there were only between 25 and 34 Amur leopards -- described as one of the most graceful cats in the world -- still living in the wild. (Full story) At least 100 are needed to guarantee the species' survival which depends upon female leopards breeding. There are more male leopards in the wild than female because cats tend to breed males when under stress, WWF said. "Leopard murder can only be provoked by cowardice or stupidity, in this case most likely by both," Pavel Fomenko, WWF's biodiversity coordinator in Russia's Far East said in a statement. A hunter shot the leopard through the tail bone. It tumbled over and was then beaten over the head with a heavy object, WWF said http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/0...reut/index.html The great white shark is being hunted to extinction in the Mediterranean, while angel sharks have disappeared altogether from the North Sea according to a report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome. Although listed as an endangered species since 1983, the great white is legally protected only in Malta. The UK government promised to protect angel sharks in 2001 but, six years on, nothing has been done and they are now classified extinct. World fisheries experts are seeking urgent protection measures and their study shows the crisis facing fish stocks of every sort all over the world. http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/...icle2341373.ece And your argument that natives hunted many large animals to extinction ~10000 years ago is disingenuous. Yes, it is possible that some species were made extinct by native hunting practices, but that argument is conjecture, there is no evidence at all that this is what happened. The argument comes across as more of a pathetic attempt to justify moder human causes of extinction. In other words, even if it was true that some paleo-indians 10 000 years ago hunted some large mammals to extinction, it does not mean we should do the same thing. If the paleo-indians did indeed do this it was simply not clear to them as it would have happened over a thousand years, it could not have been deliberate. Whereas we know we are causing the extinction of many species over an incredibly short period of time, and we still think that so called 'progress, profit, and development' has precedence. Modern economic systems have been the cause of countless extinctions all over the world. That is simply not deniable. Actually, the extremely limited agriculture practiced by some native tribes was ALOT better..... having a land turn fallow and then moving on allows the land to become fertile again. Its much better than farming the same land over and over again , pumping it with chemical fertilizers because it long ago became infertile due to overuse. Now our agricultural land is almost completely devoid of the minerals required for a healthy diet. Unfortunately, these millions of years of erosion and centuries of unwise farming practices have made good, mineral rich soil a scarce commodity. Soil tests from all over the world have revealed that our soils are severely lacking in minerals. This in turn produces mineral deficient plants with greatly reduced food value for us humans and the animals we eat. http://www.trccorp.com/faq_root_disease2.php Thank You. This proves my point. And why exactly do these colonizers burn acres of rainfoerst? Who own them? Who buys the products? Im not talking about war, althought it was generally not even close to as horrific as what we do now and what we did to them. Im talking about their communal life within the tribe. So you agree that they did not commit genocide on an industrial scale? And you argument is that they would have had they had the technology? That is such a ridiculous argument. It essentailly says" natives would have been just as murderous and cruel as europeans, had they been europeans...." no shit... the fact is they were not and they did not. Perhaps you can show me how you know this? Did you know that this argument rests solely on computer modeling of the ecosystem? Did you know there is no fossil or archaeological evidence of this at all? Actually no, its based on misunderstandings and misrepresentations. You still have plenty of homework to do. Keep trying though. For the sake of the worlds environment we desperately need to change the way we go about our subsistence. I suppose you have this naive view of utopia where all 6 billion adopt the same wasteful lifestyles we currently indulge in? So how exactly is that possible when we are all fed by chemical fertilizers derived from fossil fuels that is non-renewable? I guess ignorance might indeed be bliss, but i prefer to take a more realistic view of our situation. Andrew

Huh? So natives had big corporations whose sole purpose was to extract resources until the reources were no more and then move on to the next batch? Did natives put dams on the rivers that would destroy the salmon? Did natives put toxic chemicals into the air, food, and water? Did natives hunt for sport or for subsistence? Did natives scrape the ocean floors of all sea life? Did they practice agriculture and factory farming? Did they tear down forests so they could build cities and roads? Did they live in nurturing communities or did they live in isolation from their neighbors? Did the natives ever construct gas chambers and commit genocide for no other reason than perverted ideology? And the list goes on and on.... The natives were not people like us and they did treat the ecosytem as if they were a part of it, not separate from it, not with some perverted notion of having dominion over it. Your post above is possibly the most uninformed and idiotic thing i have read in while. Maybe ever. So what was the population of the globe at the dawn of civilization 8 - 10 thousand years ago? What is the population of the globe now? Did you even think about what you posted? Wealthy industrial first world states certainly have lower birth rates than the poor parts of civilization, ill give you that one. But are you under the impression that all 6 billion people on the planet can live like we do? Who will we exploit if everybody demands equality? Who will make the cheap garbage that lines the shelves at the supermarket? Where we will get our slave labor? It takes 25% of the worlds resources to make us obese and wasteful in the low birth rate nations that make up only 5% of the worlds population. Where will the resources come from for the other 95% of the people? Where? Andrew

So do you think the earth can sustain an unlimited amount of people? Because that is exactly th path we are on. And if the earth can't sustain an unlimited amount of peole do you think it is better to just go on like we do and have them all die in war, disease, famine, and environmental disater? Or do you think it would be better if we changed our subsistence patterns to begin a slow retreat of humans from the planet to a amore manageable level? How is that a meaningless comment? Do you not think it is wise to include the ecosystem in our ethical system? Andrew

Any problem with the ecosystem is caused by overpopulation. Are you volunteering yourself for immediate termination in the name of 'preserving the ecosystem'? Over population is a result of our 'civilized' disposition to the land. Overpopulation comes through exploitation for profit without an eye to the long term consequences. Our mode of economy is inherently unsustainable, and is really only focused on how much one can profit. The problem is not originally over population, over population is merely a result of a faulty world view. Apparently you prefer to just ignore these problems and make really useless glib comments that are meaningless. Andrew

BS. Anyone born here has a equal moral claim to this land. Anyone who claims otherwise is a racist. We lose any moral right to the land by the way we treat it, we don't gain this right by virtue of just being born on it. Besides, the whole issue of land rights is backwards anyway. We should just recognize that the ecosystem itself has a right to flourish, and no human being has a right to interfere with that. Andrew

I see you have a lot in common with the militias in Iraq. I see you have a lot in common with slaves. I don't accept the notion that the state should have a monopoly on violence. And i will never accept the notion that any poeple would ever accept occupation or invasion. Andrew Well perhaps you can set the good example and beat a hasty retreat to south wales. Actually my image is one where instead of the occupied being forced to conform to the ways of the occupier, we just reverse it. We would be much better off if, at the very least, we treated the land with the same respect as the natives did before we destroyed them and their culture, just so we could set out to destroy their land. And if this can't happen either, well i see no reason why i should respect our ways, or cooperate with the destruction. Andrew

I see you have a lot in common with the militias in Iraq. I see you have a lot in common with slaves. I don't accept the notion that the state should have a monopoly on violence. And i will never accept the notion that any poeple would ever accept occupation or invasion. Andrew

Yeah. Like what...making molotove cocktails out of their beer and liquor bottles? Those so-called protests are just an excuse to have their BBQ party! These are the kinds of natives we are supporting financially for life....literally pissing their life away! And wasting our money. You can keep justifying and make excuses for their entitlements and their so-called rights....rights that has no more bearing when they go on to trample on the rights of others! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! Actually i need not make any excuses for native entitilements and rights. They are the only ones with any natural ethical or moral right to this land. Its is you who needs to make excuses for the behavior of the occupier. Andrew

You should have said "is a bogus", not "is a bonus". Seriously, you sound like a traitor or at the very least a self-hater. I would assume by your world view i would be both. Andrew

Perhaps you should read my post again. I did read your post, and your argument comes across as if someone were singing the virtues of chemotherapy after it cured their lung cancer, when in fact they could have just avoided lung cancer and chemo altogether if they just didn't smoke. Andrew

So you are saying the police should just go in an shoot any protestor that refuses to move? You can't have it both ways. Protestors can only get away with what they do because they live in a society where using force is not acceptable. That makes them the aggressors. No, not at all. Im just questioning the idea that 'civilized' people are non-violent. If anything civilization is characterized just as much by violence as it is by anything. And here you just said force is not acceptable in society..... just what are we doing in Afghanistan than? Any sort of violence instigated by the police I hope the native protesters would match with even deadlier force. Andrew

Thats kinda funny since the entire history of civilization is a litany of disputes being settled by force. Andrew

link So called Arabic numerals actually date back to the 5th century BCE India. The very fist use of the '0' was found on a cave wall in India dated long before Islam was even a religion. Andrew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

I support any and all acts of civil disobedience. My support goes out to these natives. Anything that disrupts the status-quo and harms the economic exploitation of the planet is a bonus. I hope they continue this all through the summer. Andrew

Huh? Criticizing religion is not bigotry. Andrew

How does "certainty in the afterlife" cheapen the reality of the earthly life or make the living dispensable? Because the point of living is just a gateway to heaven. How do you think a suicide bomber justifies his acts? How do you think a christian capitalist justifies the destruction of the earth? Both are examples of how religious certainty about death cheapens actual life on earth. Earth is not important to these people, they only really care about what happens after. Andrew

Two things: First, it's not "radical Islam" under discussion; it's Islam. I view all religious belief as radical, since any religious belief requires a suspension of logic and a leap of faith, it can only be radical in regards to rationality. And where exactly are we today? Sure, in many western nations we have a level of freedom that is mostly unprecedented in human history, and we have a medical science that is really quite a marvel. But from my view this is more a function of our understanding of the natural world, and in more modern times, our insistence on secular principles in government. Without science we have no medical and industrial revolution, and it is those things that put us where we are today more than anything. Im not claiming that the world should be governed by science as if it it is some great panacea for human betterment, but at the very least a scientific/agnostic predisposition towards the world and human spirituality is far superior to an insistence on ancient texts written by men who were very ignorant of things that are now relevant to us. But lets say that at one time the Christian heritage did teach people compassion and love, education and tolerance. Great. I bow down and say thank you very much. But in the end that says nothing at all about the validity of the churchs claims to metaphysical knowledge. Besides, there are better reasons to be good and moral, better reasons to educate oneself, than for anything contained in the bible. God is dead, so to speak. And at this moment in history, the Christian church is at best benign, and at worst a self fulfilling prophecy for armageddon. Actually this is generally attributed to Persians and Arabs before the 12th century. The Christian west was a backwards and barbaric mess of brutality and infighting. The peoples of the ME were the center of rationality and science before islam brought the perversion (which also plagued christianity) that science was evil, and it has been downhill for the Arabs and Persians ever since. And where did the Persians and Arabs get their knowledge of such things? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc... These men were concerned with knowledge, logic, science, and rationality. and that is indeed where the heart of modern western civilization lies. My point comes down to the Christianizing of the pagan roman empire and its love of high brow greek culture. This was a retarding moment in human development. Had the Roman empire been able to resist the christian movements, we might not have had to deal with millenia of human stupidity and superstition. There may have been a nice little continuum of greek philosophy and science without it being broken and perverted by the religions of Abraham... be it Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Your point that it was a debate over religion that fostered rationality is lost, since we need only have never confused the issue by introducing religion in the first place. We could have just continued the healthy and honest debate begun by the greeks. That is why religion to me is an obstacle, it represents a long and needless (often bloody and painful) mental block in the history of civilization. As above, our spirit of inquiry was set loose long before Abraham, and it was a result of such Abrahamic nonsense that our true spirit was stunted in favor of religion. Most people would actually credit the renaissance (not the reformation) for the modern outpouring of inquiry into nature and science. The reformation was more just a loosening of the grip of fundamentalism. Note that the word renaissance actually means re-birth. The reason this word is so important is because we were reborn as our classical ancestors from antiquity. We were now free to pursue, again, the mode of inquiry begun by Socrates. If only religion had not gotten in the way for 1500 years. Andrew

Yes. I think there were also Christians on the bus as well. But pop music, sports, and patriotism rarely lead people to absolute views on the origin of the universe and the certainty of an afterlife. For me that is the crux of the problem. Such certainty in the afterlife cheapens the reality of the earthly life and makes the living and breathing dispensable. Mix that with the technology to cleanse the earth of humans altogether and we have a huge problem. Andrew

I cant think of anything of any tremendous value that religion has brought to humans, let alone radical islam. All i see are obstacles to understanding, enlightenment, intellectual honesty, and above all, a genuine and effective sense of ethics and morals. Lets take two thing that have different degrees of abject stupidity. I think most people would agree that Christianity is not as violent and evil as it once was, but lets look at this vulgar waste of money and effort that was revealed by the catholic church recently: A Vatican committee that spent years examining the medieval concept published a much-anticipated report Friday, concluding that unbaptized babies who die may go to heaven. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/04/23/254.html How is this not the most ridiculous thing.... grown adults who spend years studying whether or not unbaptized babies can go to heaven??? WTF??? Do these people have nothing more important to do in a world ravaged bv poverty, war, disease, and environmental destruction??? Imagine if the energies of the church could be put towards important things rather than the fantasies of idiotic men.... This was front page news in my daily... what a disgrace to human intelligence and integrity. This is just catholics, what about the rapture movement in North america, or the genocidal form of christian orthodoxy found in the Balkans? We could also look at an obscure kurdish religious sect called Yazidis. One of their women in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) fell in love with a muslim man and converted to Islam. Her family members tracked her down, dragged her back home, and had her stoned to death. Yikes... In response some radical islamicists on Saturday rounded up some 23 Yazidis from a bus travelling through the region, lined them up and executed them in revenge for the stoning of the convert. http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2007...113439-sun.html BASHIKA, Iraq -- Gunmen have killed 23 members of the Yazidi religious minority in an apparent revenge massacre in northern Iraq. Witnesses say gunmen stopped a bus and separated out followers of other faiths, whose lives were spared. Yazidis are a small group concentrated mostly around the northern city of Mosul, 360 km northwest of Baghdad. They are primarily Kurdish, and worship an angel figure that some Muslims and Christians consider the devil. A police official in Ninevah province, where Mosul is the capital, says the execution-style killings were in response to the killing two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman who had recently fallen in love with a Muslim man, then converted to Islam and ran off with him. She was later kidnapped by relatives and stoned to death. A grainy video purporting to show her death has appeared on Iraqi web sites. So yes, Radical Islam has brought nothing of value to the world. But i really have trouble seeing what any other religion has brought to the world except superstition and resistance to knowledge of the natural world and excuses for murder. Religion is a cancerous tumor on the human capacity for compassion, growth, understanding, and progress. What do we do about it though? Andrew

The same thing could happen in Canada even with our gun control laws. The reason this happened has more to do with mental illness than it has to do with guns. If guns did not exist, or he could not get access to them, he might have used bombs made from everyday over the counter chemicals and the death toll may have been higher.... Whenever these things happen the guns are mainly just incidental to the act. And as many gun loving Americans or Canadians will argue, just one law abiding licensed and well trained gun owner in that class could have saved a few lives. (a bit of a stretch but quite possibly nonetheless). Ironically, Virginia just recently refused to pass a law allowing gun possession on campus. The fact is, this was a sick person who completely lost it and nobody was able to stop this guy before he acted. Andrew

Wow, you cant honestly be this ignorant. Must be willful ignorance.... A Good comeback. Have figleaf report you, okay? Comeback? Just stating the obvious. The obvious fact in question is your inability to recognize that you provided a definition of terror where terrorism is OK as long as it is deemed legal (non-criminal) terror by whatever institution. If you cant see the bullshit and moral depravity in that type of definition you are either not very bright (something that is becoming clearer to me), or you are just willfully being stupid, for whatever childish reason... ***Yawn*** Andrew

No. Im talking about Article 1. The Purposes of the United Nations are: 1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; 2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; This has everything to do with what Nuremberg considered crimes against the peace, or wars of aggression. UN resolution 3314 defined aggression to be: Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this Definition. Everything the US has done in Iraq since '91 and including the 2003 invasion has resulted in the opposite of everything the UN charter aims to promote. The US/UK invasion of Iraq was merely another crime in the ongoing crimes against peace perpetrated by colonialists in the ME for at least a century. I suppose you can choose to look at it in a vaccum and make your technical case for the legality of war based on the fabrications, coercions, and manipulations of the George Bush White House, im just not interested. Resolution 1441 did not call for war, the UNSC did not authorize war, Saddam was disarmed by '93, and whatever type of pain-in-the ass Saddam was being in early '03 did not justify the invasion. It comes to little more than war profiteering and disaster capitalism. 'Destroy everything and give the rebuilding contracts to your cronies' is pretty much the name of the game. The actual history of the ME and western attempts to control it are more important, and the behavior of the US in Iraq specifically over the last 30 years has been nothing less than a complete violation of the founding principles of the UN charter. Colonial/Neo-colonial history in general in the ME reads more like a complete opposite attempt at fulfilling the charter of the UN. I would never bother. I don't care if it was illegal in the US. For the same reason i don't care if Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was legal in Iraq, or the Nazi invasion of Poland was legal in Germany. It doesn't matter which laws nations make to justify their behavior. Oh, but it violated the charter, clearly and unequivocally. I'm sorry you don't see that. Andrew

Wow, you cant honestly be this ignorant. Must be willful ignorance.... A

Pure speculation: Almost simultaneous with the release of the British personnel from Iran, a roadside bomb killed 4 Brits in Basra. Perhaps this is Iran's way of saying here take your soldiers back, but remember what the reality is on the ground. who knows.... Andrew

Untrue. The war was started without a resolution permitting it, and hence was illegal. The fact that Iraq did not comply with previous resolutions, including 1441, does not mean that USA was free to declare war on it. In fact when 1441 was adopted, it was agreed that failure to comply with it will not cause immediate war with Iraq, but rather lead the way to more resolutions permitting stricter actions. The argument is and was that there were umpteen resolutions aurthorizing force starting with the intitial resolution authorising Desert Storm. That brought the cease fire agreement which in turn brought the violation of the ceasefire agreement which in turn brought further UNSC resolutions authorizing force. Ther can be no denying that the issue was tabled and force was authorised. I don't believe there were any shelf llife attached to the authorization. What can be argued is that the UNSC was wrong, what can't be argued is that according to the parameters of the UNSC, that the war was illegal. UNSCR 678 called for the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and to restore peace and international security to the persian gulf region. Some people regard the fact that Saddam fired on US and UK planes as a violation of the cease fire. What they dont realize is that the no-fly zones were a multilateral US/UK/France creation and were never part of any UN cease fire, they were not sanctioned or approved by the UN. The fact that Iraqi ground positions sometimes fired on these planes was not a violation of the cease fire in any legal sense. Further, Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, Saddam was disarmed of his WMD as was reported as early as '93. Resolution 678 was fulfilled and international peace in the gulf region was restored in relation to that situation. Only the UK tried desperately to use UNSCR 678 as legal justification for the war because they are a signatory to the ICC,Blair could conceivably be brought to trial at some later date. The US hardly cares at all about UN resolutions unless they are a means to their own narrow goals, and they could care less whether the UN considers the war illegal or not. But from the perspective of international law the war was illegal in no uncertain terms. Andrew