Black Dog

Terrorism/asymetrical warfare is obviously the main threat. ICBM's are a threat, but then so are asteroids from outer space: "potential" and "likely" are too differnt things. I don't think spending billions on a vague thereat when there are specific threats or other needs worth adressing is good value. First: Boeing's shareholders, f'r instance. Second: no, because, as I already pointed out (numerous times) missile defense is not a viable means of defense. Not yet, anyway.

B+ foR effort, Hugo, but a C- analysis. .This is the lynchpin of your argument. It's also bogus. By the time the invasion was underway, it was obvious to all that it wasn't going to be called off. Given the disparity between conventional military forces, the outcome was not in doubt: Saddam would have been well aware that his regime was doomed. There would have been no advantage for stashing or removing any WMD stocks (unloess you honestly believe that Saddam was intent on proving his invaders wrong: "Sure I'm facing certain death, my regime is over: but I sure made you look silly over the WMD's! Nyah nyah!") Therefore, it would be reasonable that any military leader would exploit whatever tactical resopursce at his disposal to either delay the inevitable or at least inflict the maximum amount of casualties on the invading force. In other words, you've got it backwards: from the moment the first U.S. tank crossed the Iraqi border, Saddam had absolutely nothing to lose. A far more reasonable explanation is that he didn't use WMD becasue he didn't have the capability.

I'm certainly opposed to waste and corruption, as well as the inequalitiesof the federalist system. However, whining and threats aren't the answer. Boo frigging hoo. The rest of the country (and indeed; most westerners) refused to buy the CPC's codswollop: that's the way it goes in a democracy. I hate the Liberals, but, IMV, a CPC government would be worse on all fronts. Given the choice a government that's corrupt and backwards versus one that's merely corrupt, I'll take the latter. Obviously, I wasn't alone. I'm a born and raised Alberta boy. Not even close. I suggest reading up on Yugoslavian history before making such ridiculous comparisons.

-Taft, 1997 The feds put up more than $100 million for BSE relief alone. Meanwhile, the province (always on the look out for the little guy) coughed up $400 million, $230 million of which went to some 50 multinational packers and industrial feedlot operations. As fo rthe border issue, that has more to do with th epower of the heavily subsidized U.S. beef lobby than it does with our federal government. No, just sick of the most prosperous province whining about being hard done by. I don't have a problem with Canadians helping Canadians in times of trouble. What I object to is the rank hypocrisy of so many Albertans who will bitch endlessly about the feds and the rest of Canada, but are only too happy to cash their cheques.

Not 100 per cent, as only a fool speaks with that amount of certainty. But I can say that the threat posed to the U.S. by ICBMs is small compared to other potential threats. Again: on a cost-benefit basis, ABM defence is simply not worth it. Let's see...tax money being funnelleled into an overpriced program of dubious value that benefits a small minority (yer average assembly-line worker at the Boeing plant doesn't make an extra dime no matter how many fat Pentagon contracts the company gets): yup, that's the G.O.P free-market in action. You should stick to your self-rationalizing, fallacious arguments. Even those were superior to this sort of drivel. Support means a lot of differnt things. It could mean one's blessing. or it could mean money, manpower, planting missiles on Canadian soil...anything.

and he wasn't alone in characterizing Iraq as an immediate threat. All of these statements were, at best, misleading, as they suggested that Iraq posed an urgent threat despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community had deep divisions and divergent points of view regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. As Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet noted in February 2004, "Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs and those debates were spelled out in the Estimate. They never said there was an 'imminent' threat." Furthermore, to those who suggest (hope?) that smatterings of finds like the one that is the subject of this thread will some how vindicate pre-war claims of Iraq's WMD threat, the question I have is: if Iraq had WMD and a willingness to use them, why didn't they?

Yes it is hyperbolic (no thesaurus required). Alberta is far from being the 90 pound weakling of Confederation. remember: those farmer's violated the law and chose jail over fines (whether you agree or disagree with teh Wheat Board or not is irrelevant; it's not like they were tossed in the clink by the Brown Shirts for no reason). I haven't heard of anyon egetting jail time for failure to comply with the gun registry. Kyoto hasn't been imoplemented yet and I don't most Albertans coukld even articulate what the NEP was. That's funny: too bad I'm not from B.C.

Revisionist tripe. One of the ways Alberta made it through the Depression (which was made worse by the province's dependancy on a single, resoursce-based industry; I guess some people never learn) was through various programs of government intervention, including Bennett's Prairie Farm Rehabilitation program and the federal Unemployment Relief Camps. The Depression also spawned numerous Keynesian economic initiatives the Wheat Board, minimum wage and unemployment insurance. So the idea that Alberta and the West pulled through because of hard work and gumption is pure, self-aggrandizing twaddle. And again, I can't help but point out that , as the recent drought and BSE crisis have shown, when the going gets tough, even rugged individualist Alberta is quick to nose up to the teat. Basically it boils down to Albertans being a self-absorbed bunch of twits who, through no work of their own, happen to be sitting on an economic bonanaza of black gold. They see this as justification, act like whiny teenagers who sulk and threaten to run away from home when they don't get their way. It's pathetic.

I object on the principle that it's a waste of money: corporate welfare for Boeing or Rayethon, Pentagon pork barrelling. Canada shouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole.

Alarmist nonsense. In the words of the American Physical Society' report on ABM technology (BTW, they are the world's largest organization of physicists): How much money are you wiling to sink into a pipe dream? The treaty applied to Russia. the U.S. abrogated it anyway. And political parties are never motivated by factors other than national security, eh? Surely the enormous influence of the military industrial comlex weilds in the American political process has no bearing at all on this program... Common frigging sense.

There's nothing so dangerous as a fool with a thesaurus. First: where did you get that 20 per cent figure? Canada doesn't even rank in the top ten of oil producing nations and estimates of capacity tend to vary. However, my main point was that Alberta is an economic one-trick pony and therefore vulnerable to the instabilities inherent in a resource-based economy. Bullshit. Battered wife syndrome indeed implies a power imbalance. But to say that Alberta, one of the only "have" provinces with its high average standard of living (due at least in part to the hated federalist system) is beaten down by the east is an offensive hyperbole that both overstates Alberta's case and trivializes real instances of abuse. No wonder separatists have such trouble being taken seriously: they're too prone to such rhetorical leaps to be considered anything but the fringe element they are. So have more Albertans in turn been moving to Ontario to boost the Tory vote there? No, I credit the drop in Con support to the fact that fewer people are buying what the Cons are selling.

My riding was decided by a few hundred votes. i can safely say mine made a difference. However, for the most part, votes don't count. For example: the votes of the 2 million westerners who voted for parties othyer than the Cons, yet are seeing little or no representation in Parliment. We need to make votes count: as MS said, some form of PR is the way to go. Countries with some form of PR systems tend to have much higher voter turnouts. That's a terrible idea, simply because two parties cannot accomodate a significant diversity of views. What you end up with are two parties virtuall indistinguishable from one another (liek The Dems and GOP down south, or the Liberals and Cons here). What are you talking about?

Not really, as the line about Kyoto is appropos of nothing. But then the whole site seems to have been written by an eight-year-old. Well, Alberta's oil reserves are mostly locked up in the oil sands which are extremely costly to develop. Alberta's natural gas and conventional oil supplies are both dwindling. Of course, even if Alberta was guaranteed a steady supply of oil, that doesn't protect its economy from the variances of supply and demand in a global economy (not to mention the fact that political instability tends to scare off investment) Of course, all this is neither here nor there: Alberta separation would be lucky to get 20 per cent of the population behind it. That's insane. canada lacks the longstanding ethno-religious tensions that fuelled conflict in post-Communist Yugolsavia (tensions that existed for hundreds of years prior to Tito). What we have is a family squabble: their political views may differ, but there's little real difference between Albertans and residents of the GTA. How are we so different? You'l notice that the Conservatives' share of the vote dropped this election in the west and went up in Ontraio: the regional differnces trumpeted by separatist alarmists are a byproduct of our flawed electorals system. And I find your battered wife analogy rather disgusting: I would hardly compare political squabbling with true oppression.

But you haven't addressed the cost (you dismissed it as being par for the course) the fact that it doesn't work, the fact that it violates important international treaties (notably the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty) and the fact it's a disproportionate response to curent threats. BZZZT! WRONG! I've already shot down the myth that military spending felled the Soviet Union (it was the inherent instability and unsustainability of the state system). Ah here we go. When in doubt, simply assume the "enemy" will behave in an utterly irrational and unprecedented way. As I've already pointed out most, if not all, states (in particular dictatorships especially ones based on cults of personality like North Korea's Dear Leader) are predominately concerned with their own survival and hanging on to power. So they do, in fact, have something to lose. (I can't imagine a Islamic fundamentalist regime seizing power in, say, Pakistan: "Alright boys, we're finally in charge: now let's commit mass suicide!") Furthermore, even if one does assume that these countries have a big enough hate-on for the U.S, there's plenty of ways they can strike that don't involve direct military confrontation or nuclear exchange.

This is my favorite part: So, because Ontario hasn't put all its economic eggs in one basket (especially one so prone to cycles of boom and bust as oil) and isn't represented by a fringe party, it's somehow Ottawa's fault Alberta gets screwed? Maybe, just maybe, Alberta should look at economic diversification (doubtful in a province that's as hooked on oil as a junkie on smack) or vote for political parties not stocked with frightening extremists. Of course, no one ever seems to ask how much separation would cost. Let's assume Alberta separates and saves their $11 billion or so a year. Well, they'd need to spend money on building a new civil infrastructure (including police), and they'd need to make do without federal transfers for health care, education and whatnot. And being Alberta, they'd want some semblance of a military. None of this would come cheap. Add in the fact that Alberta is vulnerable to fluctuations in world petroleum prices and you'd have a tiny, economically unstable, landlocked state with a population smaller than most major North American cities aand completely surrounded by foreign countries (one of which: Canada is not too likely to be all that chummy) An independant Alberta would quickly become a northern Puerto Rico, only with crappier weather and more oil.

If ever anything's called for a "And if they jumped off a bridge, would you?" response, it's this. Seriously, is that the best counter argument you can muster? I know Japan and Australia are looking into it. I've heard nothing about anyone else. Yeah, those damn pinkos with their fiscal responsibility and their respect for international treaties! *shakes fist*

Do people still sincerly believe the Liberals are left-wing? Those days are gone. Chretien and Martin have certainly pandered to the left with empty promises and progressive rhetoric, but when the rubber hit the road, they co-opted most of the Reform/Alliance's economic policies of cuts to services and taxes, while remaining steadfastedly wishy-washy on progressive social reforms.

Or perhaps they censor it because showing people jumping to their deaths is in incredibly bad taste? Take off the tin foil hat. I don't know how long it's going to take for the morons of the right to grasp the fact that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were far worse and far more pervasive than the photos that were released would indicate (and even those were appalling).

It doesn't seem a trifle odd to you that Saddam would, as supporters of the invasion contend, expend enormours amounts of time, money and effort to build and conceal a comprehensive WMD program, and then not even bother to keep decent records of it? It's possible that these shells (mor ethan likey of pre-gulf War vintage) were concealed and forgotten, or lost in the bureaucratic shuffle (military equipment goes missing all the time). The point is, everyone knows Iraq had WMD prior to Gulf 1. Most of it was certified destroyed. No doubt there are portions that are missing or undocumented. The real question is: does a handful of 12+ year old shells constitute an "urgent threat"?

I think they should play it safe and close everything on Fridays too. I'd appreciate the three-day weekend (provided, of course, the bars stay open: after all, I find it a lot easier to keep the Sababth holy with a couple of cold ones in hand.)

I gather you cannot see the contradiction at the heart of this statement. If we are, as you say, not created equal, then its safe to say that many, through circumstances beyond their control, are constrained from achieving or pursuing the same oportunities as others. That's the idea behind a progressive social system and wealth redistribution: levelling the playing field so everyone gets a fair shot while helping those who have got a bum hand. The flip side of course is why should those who are born in to fortuitous circumstances not of their own making benefit more than others?

Nonsense. The complexity of nature is by no means a corollary of intelligent design. The "watch maker" analogy is weak in that such a "first step" is not required, nor does it explain where this "designer" originated in the first place. It's one of the great contradictions and weakness of theistic thought: we are expected to believe that a supreme being is responisble for setting all in motion, while at the same time believing the existence of said supreme being is eternal and predates the universe itself. Why not simply assume the universe itself is eternal and constantly in flux, thus cutting out the cumbersome and highly illogical notion of a supreme being? Natural explanations are simpler, and more in line with what we know about the universe. In other words, this "God" thing is a philosophical concept, a handy catch-all to explain the mysteries of the universe that are beyond our grasp. Fair enough. But it's a helluva stretch to go from this conceptual deity to one that dabbles in human affairs, listens to prayers and arbitrarily consigns humans to the pleasures or horrors of an afterworld. Why does there have to be a why?

That doesn't follow, because none of the above are redistributions of wealth. They are publiclly provided services, paid for by taxation, which is a form of wealth redistribution. But then, I assume you are of the Randian "taxes are theft" school?

Exactly. Not to mention: if God, then which god?

The U.S. faced a very real ICBM threat from the Soviet's for almost 40 years. Yet, despite the absence of a missile sheild, the two never came to an exchange. Surely there's a lesson there? We can argue the philosophical merits of a missile sheild till the cows come home. But ABM fails to pass the basic cost-benefit test. Basically: the absence of a realistic ICBM threat, combined with the extremely prohibitive costs of such a program and the simple matter of it failing to perform its assigned task means that the missile shield is not worth pursuing.