SirRiff

the liars who kept blabbing about aluminum tubes and huge stockpiles of WMDs are the ones who should pay the price for thier lies. europe never said it had lots of cash laying around ready to hadn over to rumsfelds great plan. if america thinks its qualified to go against the worlds opinion and not wait for the UN, then they should have cash on hand and show everyone how its done. if iraq is a flourishing democracy in a few years and we are digging up millions of tons of WMDS then the US can thumb thier nose at teh world with reason. sirriff

but why couldnt you say that of American behavior during the last 50 years. installing dictators, trading arms with iraq and iran, supporting terrorist rebels, supporting the latin americans military regime and so on and so on. the death and suffering and immorality is the same, and in fact far fewer deaths have been caused by suicide bombers then the weapons and dictators the US has used. so why arent hte palestinians just resorting to the same violence that other strong nations have resorted to in secret? both are evil, but i rarely see the widge bridge of morality seperating them. the arabs just dont have good PR guys in suits. SirRiff

well living independantly is a vauge term. sure, if you took me out at 7 months, and hooked me up to a dozen machines, yeah you could force me to live. but premies have long term health problems, and its more like you can force a 7month baby to live, but it cannot in the natural sense of the term, survive away from its mother. i still dont see why how the procedure is done is important. neither option is pleasent nor reasonably civilized if you ask me. as long as you are not causing unneeded suffering the end cause is ending the pregnany. the details are just a way for both sides to use medical terminology to obscure the real ethical debate. either its right for a mother to end her pregnancy, or its not. removed from causing real physical suffering, nothing else matters. i can only conclude its unavoidable, adn thus would cause more suffering by forcing unwilling women to find thier own methods to not have a child. many of which i suspect woudl involved abandoning, or starving the child after pregnancy. which would be more cruel in many ways. SirRiff SirRiff

well in the period you are referring to, that was the way of the world. are you saying that the church during that period was a poor victim? that europe was a peaceloving humanitarian region? nope, the world was violent crusades were the way to expand power, so both sides did it. obviously it has no bearing on the philosophy of either religion, since society was primative and poor during that time and warfare was very common. and by the way, the same argument coudl be made against teh US in teh last 50 years by the citizens of afganistan, or iran, or iraq and so it. it depends alot of perspective. for example, sept 11th, 1973 in chile. SirRiff

thats funny, i took an econmics course last year and it was just the the study of economics. no talk of gloom and doom. i would suggest you enrol in an econmics course then come back and report what you found. else its just unfounded propaganda the same universities that do research to diseases, and teach engineers how to design buildings, and train journalists, and lawers and produce MBAs are the same ones who teach about capitalism. so either all the science coming out of universities is left wing propaganda, or its all right and people are just depserate to criticism the advanced thinking that goes on in intellectual institutions and gave the world everything we have today. craig i think its pretty sad you have to respond about eating dog when someone talks about the great coutry we have. all advancemnts we have in society are because someone didnt listen to teh close minded people who are scared of change. all these cell phones, and the internet, and modern medicine and skyscrapers are all because western civilization stopped playing voodoo with race, and gender, and these outdated "moral" values that really just serve to keep middle aged white men rich. canada continues on the path of tolerance and progress and it will not change SirRiff

you cannot be "too this" or "too that" if you are successfull. and considering we have the among the highest quality of life on earth, by definition we have succeeded. thus we are just right. the only way a policy is bad is if it detracts from our quality of life. since politicians just spew preconcieved ideas unresponsive policies that move resources back and forth and back and forth and rarely make any net gain, i doubt most of the left v right debates really improve canda. just waste time and money. SirRiff

what does it matter how the fetus is destroyed? because its exiting the birth canal does that make it any more or less moral? in "normal" abortion the fetus is torn to shreds inside the womb before being removed. doesnt matter how they do it, its either right or wrong. everything else is unrelated. SirRiff

we have covered this in detail on the thread specifically, a few pages back i wrote a detailed and very reasonable explanation for the basis and origins of the genetic influence of homosexual behavior. its based on real genetic truth. geneticly hardwired homosexual behavior is very possible, SirRiff

hey bush took mahatir aside and give him some tough love. maybe chretien was telling him a story of love or something. SirRiff

uh we also get about twice the level of government services i would wager. ever pay for a dentist in teh states? its insance. not to mention that by financing social problems, we actually SAVE money in the long run by preventing alot of pain and hassle. there was a UofToronto prof who calculated that the US employs a huge number of people in completely redundant roles to track private health care charges. Thus canada is more efficient in that respect because we do not encourage redundant jobs in the free market. govenment does health care better, its more fair, and takes care of everyone for less. which produces its own benefits to society in the long run. just measuring taxes with the context of the function of society is useless. we get way more social bang for our buck. SirRiff

since when do you need to be lectured by some guy in a funny hat to love God? why does buying a $9.99 bible making you a true follower? hospitals are for medical science. most of which the bible would deny exists by some modern interpretations. if someone wants to pray, they have a direct line with God. God never said he would pass over the rooms without the made in china bible in the drawer. SirRiff

criminalizing pot does not seem to be worth its cost in resources to society. people are actually dying of treatable disease and social violence. there is no way to justify locking up 18 yr olds for a joint when we still have other problems. and there are several european nations that can handle pot being legal. no reasons we cant. alcohol, tobacco, and guns kill more people then pot ever will. SirRiff

i dont like israeli policies but its obvious muslims have shot themselves in the foot by adopting backwards social policies, oppressing women, and not embracing technology and economic innovation. and killing each other doesnt help. sirRiff

the US supported saddam while he killed his own people. the US sold him weapons, the US sold iran weapons, and let them kill each other. the US gave weapons to afgan terrorists/rebels. the US assisted in the 1953 coup in iran to secure oil interests with the british. the US assisted in the 1973 coup in chile. not to mention numerous other dictators the US helped to get into office, gave weapons to, or generally maintained. how exactly did the UN support hussein? did they give him missles or something? maybe if the US hadnt supported saddam in the first place they would have the moral highground. but they dont. and the US is the most dependant on middle east oil, hence they rushed to protect thier investment. japan actually sent 10B along with saudi arabia. you do recall why the US formed in the first place right? peacefully resolve conflicts? i'm sure they would not approve of vietnam (killing 1 million vietnamese) or funneling weapons to afganistan (helped to further destroy the nation), or supporting both iraq and iran kill each other. the US looses 1 man a day. there is no such thing as 100% safe there. its way too dangerous. and it could go on like this for years. it would be stupid to sit there like a giant target nad half to rely on the whim of hte US. yes well that is what the UN does. it is not a war machine. its very good at reconstruction. not to mention Bush & Co have been begging for UN legitimacy, and foriegn troops and money. so yes, the world needs to help iraq else it will turn into afganistan. SirRiff

not secondary sexual characterists. those are just phenotypes. this early genetically dependant action would effectivly alter the very DESIGN and neural development of the brain. how are behaviors and instincts hardwired into the brain? neural connections. its all neurons linked to other neurons by dentrites accross synapses with neurotransmitters released causing action potentials that propagate signals, the design of the brain at this very very early stage would be, like all early development, very elastic and pluralistic in terms of its final configeration. thus the very nature of the human brain, including everything that the brain does much of which is encoded by complex neural connections, would be very influenced by this kind of early genetic sex variation. this study supports the idea that there would be truly identifiable genetic hardwiring (once we identify the genes more), that it wouldnt just be the latter effect of gonad induced hormones that alter the brain into specific m and F functions. thus depending on certain combination of genes, the basic design of the brain maybe redesigned BEFORE traditional sex hormones take effect. this would identify certain gender isolated behaviors. as i said somewhere before, sexual identity, sexual preference, and sexual gender may all be seperate genetic units. each can be mixed and matched to some degree. you could have a male body, that feels female, who is drawn to men or a female body,that feels female, that is drawn to women. each part of these important behaviors may be strongly encoded in finite genetic units, which start acting on the brain before the physical body takes form as a specifc sex or is exposed to traditional learned behavior. its about the basic design of teh brain as conserved by evolution to work. the design is altered by genes before the body is even developed into somethign recognizing a m or f. this genes can be mixed and matched and changed, and thus different componants of sexual behavior can be brought together in different ways, and hardwired into the brain before any of the physical manifestations of sex of environment have thier chance to input. that is a very powerfull case for genetic influence of behavior considering it precedes hormonal input. sirRiff

when you start bashing porn you know you are desperate for votes. no province can seperate without a war. the nova scotia fishermen against the alberta pipe fitters. why is it that people always assume that just changing to anythign else but what we have will solve the problem? as if there wouldnt be divorce, or porn, or civil rights abuses in a seperated province. and as if progressive civil rights have caused people to cheat on each other and all the other problems of society. sirriff

what can you expect with that audience? every corrupt arab puppet regime on earth was there. they just like to blame jews then go back to their luxory lifestyle. sirriff

just as one more attempt to show that genetic influences are generally misrepresented in the scope of these debates a really interesting study just published this week shows a definate genetic influence on the brain development of rats in the earliest stages of sexually dimorphic (two versions M+F) of brain development. Molecular Brain Research Sexually dimorphic gene expression in mouse brain precedes gonadal differentiation 8 October 21, 2003 the abstract; thus when yoy say genes alter the design of the brain at the earliest stage to reflect specfici sexual design, it is not to hard to extrapolate that those designs bring with them behavior. this is BEFORE hormones, or environmental factors, and all the learning that goes on. this could prime the brain to really learn things in a preplanned way that would shift the results to one side of the spectrum. the purpose of the experiment some of their conclusions in case anybody is wondering how they did this... they have a generic 'gene chip' that has the entire known mouse genome distributed accross the silicone waffer. the DNA is bound and fixed to the chip by laser energy. They then take brain samples and purfiy and extract teh DNA. when they allow the sample to bind to the localized segments of rat DNA on the chip, they can visualize the differences by UV light using a laser to read the amount of light produced by the florescense chemicals attached to the DNA. then they also biochemically reverse amplify the existing specfic DNA in another pure sample to get relative amounts in M and Fs. these two measures are compared to make sure they match and confirm the relative amounts produced in Ms and Fs. they found that long before hormomes acted on the brain the different genetic sex influences found in M and F already was starting to differentiate the basic brain design. interesting stuff SirRiff

here is the transcript. using the world ashamed isnt like some giant leap of believability or anything. and its not like the national post cant get the basic jist of the story right. >>> Let me briefly mention Canada. It is the one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong way rapidly. The domestic politics in Canada and policies aside, I've had conversations with Canadians at some length and many of them are concerned about the behavior of their Prime Minister now joking that he's going to use marijuana in his etirement. They are ashamed that he doesn't get the message that this is a serious matter, serious matter for young people, and the statements of leaders make differences that simple prevention programs can't change. Many of them are hopeful that the new leadership in Canada will aggressively turn around. They need to stand up now. The legislation that may be pushed through the Canadian Parliament is not simply a domestic matter for Canadians. By their own estimates, up to 90 percent of the high potency marijuana being grown in Canada is being shipped to the United States. Canada has been the single largest supplier of seudoephedrine for the making of methamphetamine for the United States market of any supplier. We have had great cooperation from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other Canadian police agencies. The problem is the laws in Canada are utterly inadequate by their own admissions. People do not get serious jail time unless you commit a violent crime or harming another person. Trafficking does not get you serious jail time. Aggressive efforts to control the marketing of these products are impossible in the current legal environment and the courts in Canada have made this worse. Again, their domestic policy as a sovereign country is their business. Shipping poison to the United States is our business. ........ We're not kidding about this, this is not 19 some kind of culture war with Canada. This is about 20 the center of the drug problem in the United States, 21 and I think it's pretty clear to most people who've 22 listened, the current Prime Minister of Canada doesn't 23 26 get it. We're hoping that it's time for the people 1 who I've talked to in the Canadian Parliament to stand 2 up and say, "Enough is enough," and not let the 3 continued growth of this export make the Canadian 4 border look like the Mexican border. It is the only 5 country in this hemisphere that is becoming a major 6 drug producer rather than reducing its drug 7 production, and it's time for Canada to have the 8 leaders who have talked privately stand up publicly. >>> just to recap.. americans are willing to pay top dollar for every conceivable type of drug....and WE have the drug problem? my god, the US gov lecturing canada on ANYTHING other then military power is laughable. we are decades ahead of them in terms of social policy. who do these people think they are? maybe they will find some BC weed in iraq and label it WMDs SirRiff

what are you people talking about??? SADDAM WAS BITCHSLAPPED! his "army" would desert at teh first sign of trouble if they could. his weapons were just the same as 20 other third world nations, machine guns, land mines, mortars and so on. no WMDs. whatever he did in 1991, he certainly learned his lesson, he was SITTING ON HIS ASS for 12 years. what was he gonig to do, out wait the US influence in the region? the US had been there since 1991, adn there was no reason to believe they were leaving. that much is obvious since they came 1/2 way accross the world to kick his butt in the first place. i dont think that saying he had the capacity to carry out a decent conventional attack is realistic. if he was some cracy fanatical leader like hitler, he would have dont it by now or died trying. he wasnt. he liked the good life and his palaces. so we have this aging dictator, with a third world army, who has sat there for 12 years doing nothing. what was his intent? i dont know, and you know what? IT DOESNT MATTER why? because he would not have had the OPPORTUNITY to move on his intent. he obviously didnt have massive WMD stockpiles, all the US reports admit that. could he have had programs that he stopped 12 years ago? yeah, he could have. were they of any use? NO. they were stored away and abandoned, and certainly were not pumping out real WMDs before the war. was he gong to wait another decade, get out the old high school equipment, and start over again? well hell, any high schoo in europe given 10 years could make enough disease germs to kill hundreds of people. that line of "intent" is so vauge and of such low thresehold that almost ANY nation on earth except Canada or switzerland could be accused of that. lets compare it to the US conventional wars. they bombed the hell out of vietnnam and killed 1 million civilians, not to mention institutinalized the use of war crimes in teh jungle secrety sent weapons to osamas rebels in afganistan in the 80s secretly assisted in a coup in iran in 1953 (shows intent) secretly assisted in a coup in Chile on setp 11, 1973 (ironic) ' secretly supported saddam while he first starting gassing an killing his own people secretly sold weapons to iran to fight saddam. and not to mention the numerous other coups in south american the huge amout of misery the US has SECRETLY spread just by conventional weapons, secret coups, and supporting dictators, blows saddam out of the water. hell, numerous secret coups shows just as much intent as saddam hiding test tubes in gardens. this war was just following through on strategic and political philosophies. nothing more. SirRiff

UN population projection truth #1: the worlds population is definately growing, some would argu at an alarming rate truth #2: any solice found in the low birth rates of certain 1st world nations is buried by the certainly that pressure from immigration will grow to overwhelm any breathing room birth rates could bring. SirRiff

whoa, i dont know how you use the word glib, but nothing i said was offhand or nonchalant. just the truth. the true purpose of professional soliders is to specalize in warfare and defeat other soliders through violence (and thus some must die) so that armies need not be drawn from the civilian population at large like in old times with militias and disrupt the entire nation. whatever the particular cause of death, landmind or small arms, there is only so much protection a solider can have at any time in war, or even peacekeeping. 100% safety is only secured at home away from the fighting. thus the mission in any war or peacekeeping operation is to purposly put soldiers in harms way. why is it harms way? because we KNOW there is going to be trouble, else we wouldnt have sent trouble. in peacekeeping, its a two fold objective, fight the badguys AND help the civilians. you cannot accomplish the second without mixing with the civilians, especially in such a diverse and traditional culture. by mixing, you put yourself at higher risks in many ways. it seems obvious to me that we ARE asking our soliders to take a extra risks that are almost certain to cause some deaths. we as a nation, have collectively made a decision that these most certain deaths are tolerable in order to achieve a certain goal. sirriff

HEY! bad net ettiquete to alter a statement if you are representing it as a direct quotation! even if you perceive it to be identical in meaning. i try not to talk casually about dead Canadian soldiers, but I was recognizing that in any way death is inevitable, hence the very definition of war. yes but what if its Canadian peacekeeping policy to be right out in the open to make ties to the community? then the proper equipment IS an open jeep. i must admit however, that policy while admirable, makes me very nervous. i can think of too many situations where it would be worth it to have an official policy of less defence for community relations. especially in afganistan where there are over 1 million land mines and machine guns are more common then street lights. thus the true concern is peace keeping policy, not equipment per se, as that will determine the defence posture needed. Sirriff

no, israel was born because of jewish extremists in a territory called the Palestinian Mandate in response to british control that caused the league of nations to vote on the issue. after WWII small jewish resistance groups formed the Unified Jewish Resistance Movement and continued their fight. the british gov lost resolve nad turned teh issue to the UN, and they then voted to create israel. the ONLY reason jews got control of thier land was because of resistance and terrorism. its very common knowledge that israel was born out of terrorism. there are numerous historical accounts, but people just dont know about pre-1948 history of the region. but one thing that cant be denied, extreme jewish organizations used terror to remove british rule and get an international rubber stamp for their land. SirRiff

i'd like to know why people think its pot that bring down people, and not people who are much more likely to bring down themselves. some people have self destructive personalities. if its not drugs, it will be alcohol, or tobacco, or guns, or sex, or crime, or whatever. there are plenty of acceptable behaviors, that if abused, will ruin you. eating is one of them. you cannot blame alcohol, or tobacco, or pot if some yahoo wants to abuse it. they should be regulation, and taxed to hell to make them accessable to only people who really want them. but you cant babysit every single person. alcohol, tobacco, and guns, harm FAR MORE PEOPLE then pot EVER will. SirRiff