Michael Hardner

What are you speaking of, specifically ? What do you mean by 'identity' and 'drastic measures' ?

Riverwind is doing a great job of deflecting the basic fear-mongering that's happening in this thread, but I'd like to add that I know from personal experience that Muslims do assimilate, and lose their religion the same as the rest of us.

You could conceivably put in a test that wouldn't be politically objectionable, and it might even screen out some people. But such a test would probably amount to no more than a restatement of our constitution, and would be easily faked by anybody but the stupidest applicants.

Argus - you know how contentious this is. A single study isn't going to provide a definitive answer. My guess is that business leaders obviously want to increase consumer domand, domestically, and this is why governments of the right and left in North America have favoured immigration.

That site is quite large and covers a broad range of topics. I saw a section on genetic engineering in seeds, and on hurricane Katrina. Is there a link to a subset that deals specifically with 9-11 theories ?

911 Myths This is the definitive site for keeping track of controversies, debunking and debunk-debunking. My own take on it is that the web is full of conspiracy theorists (big surprise there) while traditional media defends the status quo. As a result, the conspiracy folks react more quickly to magazine articles, television and so forth - leaving the mainstream media without a response to their criticisms. That's why webs like 911 Myths are so important. He's done a magnificent job of going through all the theories and trying to offer explanations. For the most part, it seems to me that the conspiracy theories are mostly based on errors or misreporting. Do check it out.

Nothing can be proven definitively either way. Maybe their existance signifies that, but their abundance signifies that there are problems with society.

Fortunata, The same sentiment has been expressed over and over again on this forum, but there hasn't been a practical idea to how this could be implemented. You could have a box on a forum that immigrants have to check: 'Do you agree with Canadian values yes/no ?'. How effective would that be ? The other extreme is to restrict certain types of people based on religion or where they're from. That would be a political non-starter - it couldn't even be suggested. Anyone who tried to do this would have impossible legal hurdles to get it through.

The answer is: whatever politics demands. Sort of... But then again, the public is smarter than most people realize. Which is better: 1) Tell the public to stay out of it and trust the experts. 2) Have experts from both sides bafflegab the public with their arguments, stressing that they're right. 3) Expect every single citizen to get an MA in Economics. 4) Have each side put their most attactive economic expert with the deepest voice on television to plead their case. 5) Have a journalist give a 10 second sound byte on each side, leaving out key issues and misexplaining it. 6) Have actual economic experts who are objective and are trusted by the public explain the benefits and costs reasonably completely, in plain language. We use a mix of all of these methods to convey information to the public. Obviously, 6) is the Holy Grail.

I agree wholeheartedly, Charles. The ideas of 'right' and 'left' are more fluid with time than most realize. Marx framed his discussions around the industrial revolution and projected the situation then across all of history. Certainly there's some truth there, but not universal truth. Socially conservative viewpoints are shared by right-ists and left-ists in certain areas, as are viewpoints on economics. The computer revolution has made decentralization a major shaping force in society, so it's time for us to stop looking in the rear view mirror and look forward to the world (or country if you prefer) that we want to create. I'm thinking that the person who answered 'none of the above' got it right.

Figleaf, Your idea sounds idealistic to me. In almost every human endeavor certain people lose and certain people win. This is sometimes called 'progress', but tell that to blacksmiths, and typewriter salesmen and see if they like that term. Even finding a cure for cancer would put radiologists out of work. Obviously, there should be some cost/benefit analysis done, but I'm saying that you can't make the requirement as stringent as you suggest. The biggest benefit, evidently, is economic. Unfortunately, economics is a dense area rife with subjectivity, misinformation, false statistics and so forth. To the general public, this topic is about as understandable as the practice of voodoo. So, where are we ? 1. We need our voting public to understand the issues in order to form an opinion. 2. The benefits of immigration appear to be largely economic in nature. 3. The public can't be expected to understand economics. 4. Therefore, the public can't be expected to form a well-based opinion on economics. If we still believed in experts, we might allow experts from across the political spectrum to come in and present a solution that we can all accept. But eggheads and class president types (eg. Al Gore, Charles Grodin, Pierre Trudeau) fell out of favour long ago in favour of plain-speaking regular guys (eg. George Bush, Mike Harris and The Rock). So where are we ?

Celebrity arose as a phenomenon of massive point-to-multipoint communications. First it was the cinema, which gave Mary Pickford and the like stardom, then radio which helped the rise of Hitler, next television and so forth. The next generation is much more engaged in multipoint-to-multipoint communications which seems to indicate that stars and celebrities will fade somewhat in our imagination.

Like Auguste, I wonder about this one: The economic impact of immigration is complex - some win, some lose. If you set out the restriction as stated, we wouldn't have any immigration would we ? Another one: Certainly there are many doctors who would come here and probably do a good job for $40,000/yr. The health system would benefit in that there would be more doctors and cheaper. So why doesn't this happen ? The reason is that professions generally are governed by a body that grants licenses and restricts employment so as to protect the wages of its members. By that definition, a unionized auto worker is more of a professional than a systems analyst. If you have worked in IT, as I have, over the last ten years then you know that wages have fallen, hours have risen due to the increase in supply of labour. Who benefits from that ? The general public pays less for information services - the costs of which are embedded in the price of many things we buy - and individual IT workers get lower wages.

Here's a collection of essays from MIT researchers that dispute what you posted: http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/ From the Preface: If you're LOOKING for evidence that it was an inside job, and discarding evidence that it was not then you will obviously come to that conclusion. That's been covered already. Are you talking about building debris ? It wasn't completely removed until May. This implies that somebody took a risk in plotting this disaster in order to make some money. Assuming that those in power are inhuman enough to kill 3,000 of their own kind, they would stand to lose too much to gamble on such a plan. 4 - The investigation was completely appropriate, and would satisfy anyone but the conspiracy-minded, who are never satisfied. 5 - Killing 3,000 of their own kind (ie. rich Republicans) is quite a leap from funding Contras in Central America. 6 - They had no problem drumming up support for Gulf War I, Panama, and Grenada and possibly Iran next so why risk social disorder, the loss of faith in the country, and looking completely unprepared in order to drum up support for these wars ? 7 - High ranking insiders ? I have heard of a few otherwise sane university professors suspecting an inside job, but that's all. Post links, please. The sad thing about these conspiracy theories is they're a direct offshoot of the distrust in government which has been spreading since 1980. It was started by the California Republicans, then countered by Oliver Stone's JLK. Such ideas serve individual interests quite well, but they are a cancer on public faith in institutions.

If he invests in Canada, he could be fast tracked. So I guess it's not going to happen...

Trying to lay blame for intelligence failures is really a waste of energy. In the regular bureaucracy, trying to trace responsibility for things is a challenge, in the intelligence community it's an impossibility. I'm satisfied that the enemy planned this action with the knowledge that they had the element of surprise on their side, no matter who was in the white house.

This idea (precept ? thought pattern?) has been used in Ontario recently to justify Toronto's failed 'Times Square' concept (precept ? thought pattern? ) that was to have been built near the Eaton Centre. The city evicted a bunch of small businesses for the purpose of selling the land to a big movie chain and other businesses that have since pulled out - leaving a large and embarassing hole in the wall. The idea of expropriation was really brought to the fore by a famous NYC planner named Robert Moses. If you read Robert Caro's famous biography of Moses, The Power Broker, there's a description of how RM snuck the right for the state of NY to expropriate land into a bill that became law. A few days later, some wealthy socialites were relaxing outside their Long Island mansions, when they noticed some surveyors working on their properties. They sent their butler to inquire as to what they were doing, and he returned to say "sir, they say they're surveying the new expressway"...

You know - if we banned development altogether, then we wouldn't even have to worry about this ! Food for thought...

The floor beneath their feet. Where did you get that from ? Is somebody submitting the idea now that a jet hitting the building represents a similar force to wind ?

It happened. Also happened. The steel was weakened by the fire. People in the top floors reported large cracks. A little harder to explain, admittedly.

Because planting bombs in buildings would require several times the effort, expose the plan to several times the risk, for a marginal pay off. Given that the plotters were shrewd, and wanted to succeed: this doesn't follow. Of course, anything is possible but as I said, when there are things that have to get done, it's best to dwell in the realm of the extremely likely.

Now that doesn't sound crazy at all. What about the missing passengers ? They fired a missile through the building they were going to hit ? Can you imagine the volume of intelligence that goes through the US government ? I'll bet they got warnings like that before and since. Sure, but things have to get done. They could undertake to do a background check on every person on the planes, and every person who was part of the WTC security team, and everybody who was an air traffic controller that day... We're just getting started. It's easier to take things apart than to put things together.

Given that you accept that there were planes, do you really think that the extra effort to plant bombs would have been worth it ? And USA Today could have been wrong about the weight of that beam, too...

I've heard this before, and I don't quite understand it. Isn't the prevalence of abuse important to you relative to the good that the program does as a whole ? In other words, if this happens 1% of the time, shouldn't you stick with it ?

Most of the people who get convinced of these theories (such as the perfectly insane controlled demolition theory) do so because they get single-point information from a website, or video. If you read criticisms of 'Loose Change', you will see that their explanations are completely faulty, to the point of irresponsibility. These people are also hypocrites, as they accuse officials of covering up information and denying facts, which this is what they themselves do.