SirRiff

the example of the cold war cannot serve to justify wars for ever. how did killing a million peope in vietnam help anybody ? that same system of american government that won this great victory over russia slaughted untold countless innocents in vietnam over some vauge philosophy that even the president didnt belive. america just lied to its people and couldnt bring itself to stop the killing untill it was pointless. there is no morality that comes from war, you need to decide first if its right to go start killing people. else you are just as bad as the communists and faciasts and girl scouts. sirRiff

if you want to live in a nation that spends 8% on GDP, you will have to go to israel or the middle east. canadians dont want to. we want health care and education too. why dont you tell us how those 8% nations do compared in other social issues. not nearly as well i bet. everything has a price, 8% military means 8% less of somethign else. do you have this extra 8% laying around in an old box? if you got the money sure we can spend it, but tell us how you are going to get and maintain this massive increase in military spending. and what are we going to use it for every year? SirRiff

Debo what you didnt notice in your rush to agree with hugo is the following implicit failure of his own logic. smoking can not be done without harm. gayness can be done without harm. thus they cannot be equal. otherwise you can condemn driving because some peope die. well yes, but since driving is still very safe if you make every efforts, the fact that it is done dangerously sometimes, does not mean that activity is "wrong". so my original point is correct, that gayness is more like being black or being a women, something innate, that you have little control over, that determines how you are treated by society, that of itsself causes no harm, but based on unpredictability of people does not limit free will to cause disaster. in fact, the MAJORITY of gays live perfectly normal lives, just like everyone else. and lets not forget any argument made because of someones perceived self injury can be made to some degree about anything. from being fat, to sleeping with lots of girls, to doing drugs, to driving fast, to smoking, to having too many children, and so on. it may be appropriate to comdemn an activity that cannot be harmless like smoking, to some degree all smokers are harming their health (however its still thier health). but the same argument cannot be made against gays, becaus e self destructive behavior is not limited to gays it is present in every niche of society, and because perfectly reasonable behavior is not excluded from gays, it is also found in all of society. in summery, gays are more comparable to blacks and women then to smokers because self risk is not implicitly linked to any sexual preference. its linked to the behaviors that are common in all aspects of society. the argument on self risk breaks down when you are forced to 1) logically seperate the observed gay risks from the multitide of other realized risks commonly seen in soceity, 2) defend societys historical judgement of violently oppressing minorites such as women and blacks immorally, and 3) explain how the right to intrude into personal risk is defined, limited, and decided ethically by society at large. SirRiff

righturnonred- if you have read the entire report in detail and recall the specific findings of WMDs which were cited by george bush please mention it specificly. either you know something taht the entire worlds media doesnt, or in fact whatever has been found is NOT the cited WMDs. one or the other. i believe that no weapons of mass destruction have been found AT ALL in iraq. however if kay found a single cell of bacteria, i may not know it. so what weapons did he find exactly? in addition, the mere presence of toxic chemicals could not be any reasonable person be the justification for international warfare. canada has dangerous germs, so does france, germany, china, everyone. hell, the US has the among the worst bioweapons and nuclear arsenols ever made. every nation has conventional weapons, and many have non conventional. the US itself maintains a nuclear stockpile as deterence, thereby setting the very rule that non conventional weapons can be used for defence. THUS, even though i know saddam is evil, the mere presence of weapons will not condemn every nation as evil. france is not evil. saddam was. so we must life the bar of reason a bit higher when discussing exactly what makes WMDs so 'evil' as opposed to other means, who can have WMDS, when can you use WMDs, and who makes the rules. KrustyKidd- i have two serious questions for you 1. where are the UN resolutions against comparable US military actions? Examples: sept 11 1973 US assisted coup in chile, funneling 3 Billion to osamas terrorists, supporting saddam as a dictator against Iran, supporting the iranian militant regime against saddam. 2. what would the lack of UN resolutions against the US in spite of these obviously violent, dangerous, indiscriminent, actions mean to the implicit moral authority of the above UN resolutions being cited against iraq? SirRiff

better shape is relative if your daughter was abducted as a sex slave, your husband was blown up, and you cant leave your house. and lets not forget, the US traded and armed saddam, so they had a part in making iraq so bad in the first place. its not much of a feat to start a fire then put it out once its burned down the house. SirRiff

i dont know, we are far more sensitive to the effects because our economic model is different? its perceived to be a larger blow to a smaller nation? we didnt react fast enough? the dollars lower value? the important point is the our economy could not have possiblely undergone a complete transformation in 12 months. period. it just didnt happen. a slip of 7 slots may be due to a drop in 0.5% raw values. if all that seperates the top 15 nations is a few points on a 100 point scale, then it will vary year to year. that is why i said, its possible that we might be right back up there in a year or two like nothing happened, and this while drop was meaningless in the reality. what a completely insane way of characterizing american actions. the US gave weapons to osama crew which is terrorism the US supported saddam while he was gassing and killing people- that is terrorism the US supported Iran while the extremists were in power- that is terrorism. so if they have been among the largest contributer to terror in the last 30 years, its no shock they have the responsability to deal with thier former allies, afganistan and iraq. the US was in saudi arabia to get cheap stable oil flow. that is why they support the kuwaiti and saudi regimes. its blood that keeps that oil flowing and teh US rich. thus they do nothing great when they go bomb people. they are not protecting the world. they are just taking care of people who get in their law and thus maintaining thier strategic influence. SirRiff

yeah the policy makes sense in an policy kind of wayi guess but i see my dad every morning wearing 1980s sweaters eating cereal and watching the financial news every morning . if this guy is a national security threat i am a japanese schoolgirl. and you have to ask what exactly would this piece of paper accomplish? if someone was a spy with a piece of paper, would you let him go? if you arrested someones spy with imporant information and he didnt have a piece of paper, would it make any difference to his host country? they could still demand him back or retaliate in kind, so the paper would make little difference if he was or wasnt a spy. i worked in an aerospace company during summers, and if i recall several years ago when the Eurofighter was coming up to production Canada had an opportunity to get in but we didnt. i belive that was a big mistake for two reasons, 1) the technological upgrade could have brought us right back beside the US and helped us integrate into nato missions like afganistan and such, thus we could actually send some usefull planes and kill some badguys, 2) by going with european design we could actually maintain an individual military supplier and not just take american leftovers, possibly a good way to pronounce our intent to remain clear headed about our military policy. i do recall reading an article a month ago criticising the Strykers for not being able to take an explosive round full on. i dont they they were talking about a big tank round, but the worst of the RPGs maybe. anyways, it was critical of the amor plating in terms of the nasty places it would have to go, it wouldnt be taking heavy machine guns, it would be taking the biggest RPGs. SirRiff

because we all know conservatives dont like money and dont sell thier souls to interest groups to get elected right? uh now, by definition to get into gov you need to raise money and sell your soul to interest groups. every party is the same in that regard. SirRiff

by coming in and wasting time and energy changing all the programs in place already trying to pointlessly prove that change=responsable government, adn then donig the same things that we find out years later but cant change anyways thus it would be worse SirRiff

so we are saying that Jesus was asian? what is the point of anything other then the people who wrote the history of the events of jesus? SirRiff

if we went from 9 to 16 in one year its obviously proximate causes over just 12 months. like the economy or politics. it has nothing to do with the design of our economy since that couldnt change over 12 months anyways. hell we could bounce right back to 9th again next year then. oh gee this is genius...lets see....2001...2002...2003...what does these years all have in common...duh... MASSIVE AMERICAN RECESSION???? my god, the drop in our ranking correlates perfectly with the 9/11 attacks, the american recession, the tech buble and stock market crash. so its all external effects that were of no control to us, since in 2001 we were 3rd, then after 3 bad years we are 16th. its not a sign of internal change so much as external change. we cant control when the american economy stalls or national security slows down the economy. same with the other ranking, a one year change could just be a blip, it can reflect a massive change in just 12 months. we could be ranked #1 next year, it doesnt mean we suddenly became perfect. trends are more important then anything. SirRiff

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/10/29/stewart031029 just something i couldnt ignore... you know, i vote liberal just because i think they bring less crap then the other parties. that could be debated, but thats my opinion. but this is the most pathetic behavior i can remember in a long time....this obvious conflict of interest of 5 MPs who shrug it off after the fact, its only admitted to years after the fact, they patheticly try to reimburse a few thousand dollars as if the cost is all that is important here. the PM doesnt even care to pretend to be outraged. EVEN though i find the liberals by far the best of the worst, this stupidity is enough to make me want to change my vote in anger. but then i think, am i really stupid enough to think that the same think wont happen when another party gets cocky in power? of course it will, so teh problem isnt any particular person or party or philosohopy, but the inherent conflict of interest in democracy politics. so i was wondering, in this situation, would changing my vote in punishment have any effect on the amount of this conflict of interest occuring again? i think no, its useless. SirRiff

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/10/29/notstrykers031029 RELATED STORY about security at the ontario plant- my father is an accomplished US educated aerospace/metalergic engineer who has worked in the defense industry in canada during his last 28 years in canada (the canadian navy frigates in saint john ship building, Point Lepreau nuclear power plant in new brunswick) and has run the quality department of a company that has produced many small specialized projects for US defence (predator anti-tank missles, satellite parts, attack helicopters and so on) and various other aerospace projects worldwide. he was hired in a mid-senior position at the canadian production location which makes these Strykers in ontario. unfortunately he was born overseas in islamic country. the offer was suspended after this was revealed and the position and him have been on hold approaching a year. apparently a official piece of paper is needed saying he is not a "citizen" of this country anymore. of course 50 years ago this developing nation didnt have any kind of record keeping for kids born on farms in the middle of absolutly nowhere, and certainly no piece of paper would have survived 50 years anyways in such a backwards system. and of course you cant go to a developing nation and demand heath care or something, being born in africa, or india, or indonesia, or malasia isnt going to get you anything other then funny looks. i just find it odd that a US educated man, who then spent 28 years working in high tech canadian companies with strong links to US defence/aerospace, would be a threat at the age of 55. just doesnt make sense. and of course the already struggling ontario plant had to suspend alot of other foreign born workers after sept 11, and the whole plant is underproducing and could be shut down and moved to teh US. talk about a loss of great manufacturing plant. just wanted to link the story to a real life story. its good that canada is going to get light armored vehicles. it seems more likely to fit future deployment needs even peacekeeping. they are cutting edge from what i have heard and seen about them. $500 million for 66. we should put another $500 million and replace the sea kings. we could get rid of some rampant health care fraud to pay for it. what do you think? SirRiff

how can you possibly know what these people said or did 2000 years ago? the actually events are so muddled and lost to history that its seems most likely that the creation of religions thousands of years ago were similiar to the many other popular beliefs that swept the primative societies of man. wild erratic surges of prevailing politics, which the masses accepted or rejected based on fleeting moods of the world. look at what the church has made people believe and altered ancient society and you see there was no sense of predictability to what people believed back then. humans were a primative and rodent like culture, the vast majority barely eeking out an existance by whatever way they could. no knowledge whatsoever besides what the church said. no rational argument can be made that we know from ancient accounts that jesus existed, or that miracles occured, or that the creation of religion was as has been written through history. these people were still centuries away from accepting the world was round, that evil spirits didnt cause common colds and knowing even the obvious about how babies were made. maybe jesus did live, but there is no reasonable body of evidence that shows more likely then not that he resembled the churchs account of existance. personally my faith in all things beyond me is self contained and in no need of absolute confirmation. because it cant be proven. that is why its called faith. Sirriff

its not beyond the scope of reason to believe that writings about the 1st century AD are not reliable in terms of historical accounts. for every one that mentions jesus there are 100s then talk about all sorts of voodoo and bizarre accounts of why things happen that are obviously untrue and were just the product of ignorance at the time. do we really belive that noah took 2 of everythign on the ark too ? its about as sound as the jihad clauses that are causing so much trouble these days. SirRiff

-> topic starter, not you. SirRiff

i can agree with that. but is it sane to blame a particular particular party or philosophy? no, no conservative or liberal person, party or philosohpy is to blame. in truth, the hardships of running a compex country like canada, where citizens demand a high standard of living, maintaining a constitutional democracy, employing a large bureaucracy to support large public policies, and policys are undertaken in responsible ways, means that we will never approach near 100% efficiency in spending. the overhead to run a miliary or health care system must be massive, in time and money, and THAT is why you can always point to waste in government. to achieve consensus and transparent social feedback you need a huge public service sector. thus all that 'extra' lost money doesnt go to the end product, but it goes to achieving the end product in a certain way. not perfect, but required to maintain a 1st world nation i think. same thing with the US, they spend what, $400B on defense? there was a story on CNN few days ago that the latest generation kevlar vests the 'interceptors' were not available to most american troops in iraq. they are expanding thier manufacturing base to increase production. so if you can spend $400B and still not have the best kevlar vests IN TIME OF WAR, then its not too hard to rationalize Canadian military problems. though i do agree we are even worse off then we should be, lets not pretend its easy to fix. SirRiff

sigh...ok....if you are going to start posts accusing nations adn thus thier peoples, which includes me, of being immoral, you should know what the word means. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary Main Entry: 1mor·al Pronunciation: 'mor-&l, 'mär- Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin moralis, from mor-, mos custom Date: 14th century 1 a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL <moral judgments> b : expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior <a moral poem> c : conforming to a standard of right behavior d : sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment <a moral obligation> e : capable of right and wrong action <a moral agent> 2 : probable though not proved : VIRTUAL <a moral certainty> 3 : having the effects of such on the mind, confidence, or will <a moral victory> <moral support> OR Cambridge International Corpus moral [show phonetics] adjective 1 relating to the standards of good or bad behaviour, fairness, honesty, etc. which each person believes in, rather than to laws: It's her moral obligation to tell the police what she knows. It is not part of a novelist's job to make a moral judgment. She was the only politician to condemn the proposed law on moral grounds (= for moral reasons). The Democrats are attempting to capture the moral high ground (= are trying to appear more honest and good than the other political parties). Compare amoral; immoral. 2 behaving in ways considered by most people to be correct and honest: She's a very moral woman. Oh, stop being so moral! Is TV responsible for weakening people's moral fibre (= ability to behave well and honestly and work hard)? so for the uninformed, morality has nothing to do with religion. it is simply an accepted code of conduct that existed before religion, perhaps was absorbed or redefined during the creation of religion, but it not restricted nor bound to religion and continued to evolve. do you really think egyptions didnt have a sense of morality? or that cave men didnt have a primative family group dynamic that government their interactions? seriously lets raise the bar here a bit whe it comes to indicting the entire nation of being immoral when the word is incorrectly tied to religion. once again...morality existed before religion... morality existed with or was redefined by religion... morality continues to exist and devlop after the age of dominant relgion morality would exist without religion as by product of an advanced society in addition, i found much of this article at http://christianactionforisrael.org, which means its unsourced and i took it as your own words at first. it would be proper to cite it. the site looks pretty wacky though, considering these christians support israel because they think all the jews will be killed or forced to convert eventually. just a bunch of fanatics who would be locked up if they said this about any other group of people in real life. SirRiff

it takes a very dull mind to link the actions of maybe 10 resitance fighters to a religion of 1 billion. by that logic the liars in the US gov who hyped the WMD lies make all americans liars too. SirRiff

the HDI is a great way to compare nations. but lets not forget canada was in the top 3 for a long time, so its not like we are just randomly on that list. however if you look at some of the economic leads that the US has over Canada, say GDP per capita 7 United States 35,277 8 Canada 22,343 the 7th ranked US has a 60% higher GDP per capita. if you look at the other raw indicators, you see the overwhelming economic lead of the US probably contributes alot to its position. Canadas standing are more largely reflected in health care and education. personally, i would rather have the lead in social trends then pure $$$. that is why canada has different policies. as for hosital waiting time and doctors, yeah its a bad situation. but i am unwilling to accept that social policy is entirely to blame, as the attractive earning potential of the US has been tough to compete with for many years now. however our average life expectancy is 79.2 vs 76.9 in the US. anybody who suggests that our method of health care is "broken" needs to account for the fact that there are no less then 21 nations and an average of 2.3 years seperating us. by definition, we live longer, and then our health system is "better"? HDI VS. Life expectancy at birth (years) 2001 9 Japan 81.3 3 Sweden 79.9 26 Hong Kong, China (SAR) 79.7 2 Iceland 79.6 8 Canada 79.2 19 Spain 79.1 4 Australia 79.0 10 Switzerland 79.0 22 Israel 78.9 17 France 78.7 1 Norway 78.7 21 Italy 78.6 6 Belgium 78.5 16 Austria 78.3 5 Netherlands 78.2 24 Greece 78.1 15 Luxembourg 78.1 20 New Zealand 78.1 25 Cyprus 78.1 33 Malta 78.1 18 Germany 78.0 13 United Kingdom 77.9 42 Costa Rica 77.9 28 Singapore 77.8 14 Finland 77.8 27 Barbados 76.9 7 United States 76.9 SirRiff

greg what are you talkign about??? you think is any less arbitrary then ok first, as anybody with a tv news, the US spends HUGE amounts of money peddling its influence around the world. alot of this has to do with projection of military power ie desert storm, 37,000 troops in s.korea, sending 3Billion to afganistan in the 80s and so on. so its obvious its a loosing venture considering it didnt save the 3000 people on 9/11 (ie it didnt make them safer at that moment) and all their expensive technology cant quell the resistance rebels in iraq. then craig says we should "assume" canada should match the US at 70% military spending levels, that canada has no 'pride", that we instead money on "post modern babble". he accuses us "fantasists" of "free riding" {huh?} did i just wake up in communist china or that that entire rant not make any sense or have any justification as to why it "should" be that way? its just his opinion, its vauge and ranting, but let him have it. similiarly, daniel actually did respond to his point "which is why" here he addressed the fact that our military spending is lower, we dont waste money projection our influence to buy cheap oil and fight communism, "we have a surplus" which addresses craigs point that the result is our suplus. cause and effect. then he addresses the 70% number that craig says we "should" spend by pointing out correctly i would sya that Canada "dont like to" spend our money (unsuccessfully) at world domination. as far as i see it, there is nothing more legitimate in craigs post then daniels. as he addresses the main points of craigs post without referring to vauge unsubstanciated assumptions about Canada "should" or excuses for big words "post modern" or accusing some unnamed bizarre group of "fantasists " should we submit our posts for prior approval or something? it seems a very reasonable post to me. maybe he did some pointless posts before (but who hasnt) but i dont recognize anything wrong on this one especially considering the thread starting post was just as arbitrary an opinion. SirRiff

with the way the world operations, no nation can be considered completely sovereign anymore. there are unavoidable interactions between any major event and the rest of the world. there will then obviously need to be some sort of international community for debate and posturing to take place. without it, its far more likely nations would respond by war. the complexity of such a community will always make it inefficient, owing to the large number of self interested parties that must be included. the alternative is to force a smaller group of like minded nations that specifically defend thier own interests at the STATED EXPENSE of all others. thus you could have the Strategic Treaty of United Democratic States (STUDS). made up of all democratic (whatever that means) states, and have a minimum contribution capability, like a 5% military budget minimum and a standing deployable troop force. of course this would require the other nations to form thier own federation for protection, like the Eastern Vegatarian of International Latittudes. now the question is, which one makes you safer? its no good to dismantle the UN if a nuclear war results 5 years later and incinerates, you, your family, your house, your neighborhood, yoru state, your nation, and most of your hemisphere. you cannot win the game if you are nuked. so what exactly would make the world safer? including rouge regimes in internation policies? attacking rouge regimes 1 by 1? forming small military federations of nations? SirRiff

risk it? who is risking it? its not your risk, its not my risk, its the risk of the mother and her control over her child. you will never know if the child suffers becuase you have no interest in its life. thus the mother is the one risking producing a suffering child and the chid is at risk for suffering anonymously throughout its life. no thats not really representing my position. first of all you cant kill what isnt alive. now while the fetus may be an advanced embryo, i dont think it deserves all the rights and protections of a senscient developed human being. but that may stem from my scientific viewpoint, so it admit it could philosophically be argued that even potential life must be equal to realized life for life to have any dignity at all. but, i cannot escape the fact that there is a finite amount of resources that cannot currently fufil (for many reasons) all the needs of all citizens at the same time. thus it seems unreasonable to force a completely empowered women, against her wishes, to continue with an unwanted pregnancy, which will most likely lead to a known outcome, namely the introduction of an unwanted child who is among the worst of in our society. the child will definately be subject to either abandonment or neglect through its life as we have withnessed again and again and again. even in the states, the wealthiest nation in the history of history, social child services are horrible, and rampant with abuse and neglect. so i think that when you take into account the most fundamental right that we must all possess to control our own person that must be granted to women, and secondly, the fate that awaits the child that society would force to exist, i think the second point only strengthens the first, that women must be able to prevent an unwanted life from developing and society should not interfere with that right unless they can provide a high quality of life that any unwanted child would deserve. obviously we cannot, thus i conclude it would be unethical to force that child into such a situation. SirRiff

obviously canada is different. so if every nation. you just confuse different with worse, because it doesnt fit some preconceived idea of what it should be. we are doing as well as can be expected considering we dont control the world. canada is doing very well in the world, and the only time you hear the sky is falling is when some group who would normally not attract attention, wants to get thier voice heard. SirRiff

even assuming thats true, thats just up to one point. then you still have 100% of the mothers who were going to have abortions with children they didnt want. some may adapt and become good mothers. most wont. babies are still abandoned, or put into horrible foster care and just raised in neglect. i am wondering if it takes more then delivoring a baby to actually save its life. it doesnt seem massively more moral to let an unwanted child languish in poverty and neglect for a lifetime when there are no reasources to take care of it. ultimately, there are a finite amount of resources in society. so many children already are neglected. it doesnt seem like a great accomplishment to add some more in there. its not like they have a good chance at avoiding even more suffering. SirRiff