Higgly
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Posts posted by Higgly
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What possible reason would China have for giving a US warship access to Hong Kong harbour?
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Not so fast. The problem is that the most likely invaders always have the advantage in conventional warfare. These are normally totalitarians of some stripe, since democracies (except in pre-emption situations such as the 1967 war, Afghanistan and Iraq) rarely initiate wars. The offensive parties thus can mass an economically feasible group of soldiers, and pick their own time and place for an attack. The defending parties' options are limited. They can either try to maintain a defensive line across a hostile perimeter (this option didn't work for France with the Maginot Line or Israel with the Bar-Lev Line), try to maintain adequate conventional defense capabilities (i.e. put everyone between 17 and 29 under arms and on patrol, possible but bad for economy) or ready a devastating response to any attack (i.e. nukes).
Which sounds like the best option?
OK. Why not defend the principle that invasion is wrong? This is where I put my money.
Iraq was a real watershed. Bush et al put a case before the UN predicated on their assertion that Iraq had WMD. UN weapons inspectors were not given a chance to report fully but were forced to flee for their lives. Subsequent to the invasion, no WMD have been found.
The world needs to decide whether it wants a rules-based system or a power-based system. I vote rules-based.
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After living through many wars in this world I wish that the species of MAN would stop making war that no one wins and everyone loses! Two male leader have words , pound their chest and one says I'll show you and boom, thousand of people die, mostly women and children or are mained for live!! What is it going to take before we have peace in this world again?? Maybe we should get the leaders of these countries into a cage and say ok, you want war go to it and kill each other! Can you see some of the leaders in a cage to the death??? And as far as Bush peace talks in the Middle-East, he needs something in his library and right now he's the major person causing a war!
Good for you. This is exactly the problem.
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Well there are probably some nuts who would care, but I don't think you'd see anyone arrested or any great demand for an execution.
You're right of course, but you are applying this issue to another culture. Consider the following....
1) Kitzmiller v. Dover
The Dover PA school board decided that creationism (Intelligent design) should be taught along side Darwin's theory of evolution. A number of board members voted against this, but it was carried by majority. A lawsuit ensued.
In a trial reminiscent of the Scopes trial, and in which many prominent witnesses for both sides were called, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that Intelligent design was not science but religion, and had no place in the 9th grade science curriculum.
Both Judge Jones and the board members who voted against the teaching of Intelligent Design have been subjected to numerous death threats.
2) Abortion
Abortion is now legal in both Canada and the US. In spite of this there have been a number of abortion murders in the past 15 years.
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You have chosen to ignore all posts from: ScottSA.
Ah... Sweet peace....
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Israel will continue to hold a position of well earned strength amongst her enemies, and should negotiate from exactly the same position. The US and Canada have already conquered their PalestIndians, so smugness comes easy wrt the Mideast.
Comparison with the Native situation is something that Israel's supporters do from time to time. To a certain extent they are right, but there are some important differences...
1) Many of the Palestinians actually have deeds to their land registered legally by a legitimate government.
2) There is now an international body of law which protects people in situations such as theirs
3) much of the land seizures carried out by Israel have been found to violate even Israeli law
4) Massive land claim settlements are working their way throught the system for Canadian natives
Israel may very well continue to hold a position of strength, but does it want to live forever amidst enemies? Why then is it at the table now?
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If a country which has nukes is not led by a rational government then everything is out the window. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice MAD with rational players. MAD still works with rational players. It means you should preven non-rational players from getting a hold of niukes. This is what NPT is about and this is why the US worked to preven Iraq from attaining WMDs. This is also why everyone is worried about Iran.
The prevention of nuke war is a two pronged approach - one half is MAD for existing rational players and the other half is NP for new players who are potentially irrational. If a new player enters you either have to teach him to be rational or - at that point - it amke sense for all the senior pplayers to wipe out this destabilizer before he builds up a sizeable arsenal.
Let me ask you this. In the absence of MAD what would you do? Absence of MAD basically means that party X tells part Y that if party Y launches the first strike party X will specifically NOT retaliate.
It's really a binary system.
So again - what you guys do instead of employing MAD where possible?
In any case, wasn't the article about using Nukes to stave off conventional war? MAD was about everybody on both sides having nukes.
What would I do? I say stick with conventional warfare. At least then you've got a fighting chance. Countries with superior nuclear capability are likely to have superior conventional capability anyways. If you bring nukes into the picture you can kill multitudes of people and destroy a country with just one weapon, a simple delivery system (say a shipping container) and a guy to push the button.
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Her's some shocking news for everyone. After going to NAFTA/water info on the web, I found there's big loophole on this. Thank you Mulroney!! Apparently, once water has been understood as a "economic good" as the former US ambassador said, once sold as comerical purpose no gov't or regulatory regime would be able to stop it. and then the bulk water water export company can use NAFTA rules to lift the restriction on bulk water on the Great Lakes.
That's right. That's why it should not be sold. Once we start selling it, the US can claim restriction of trade if we try to stop and could resort to military force if we didn't back down.
First there would be a big publicity buildup on CNN with the usual right-wing red-faced hotheads blathering on about what a stupid little place Canada is and how we are all commies up here anyways. Once everybody was suitably worked up, there would be some sort of act shoved through Congress in a hurry to justify the whole thing. After that would come the invasion. I can see it now. "Operation Big Slurp" complete with embedded reporters. One day you're walking down the street minding your own business and the next thing you know Stone Phillips runs up to you dressed in fatigues and shoves a mic in your face.
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A BBC commentator said he thought it was the Sudanese government slapping the west on the wrist for its recent sanctions and what not. I guess they couldn't find an American to stone to death.
The piece included a brief interview with the Sudanese Ambassador who smirked as he said that the government could not interfere in the process of law.
There was also a British Moslem cleric who expressed horror at the whole thing.
If anything happens to her in confinement, I imagine the Sudanese will be very sorry.
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You don't grasp then what MAD is. Under MAD, if a first strike is launched, MAD has failed. MAD means mutual assured destruction. The prospect that no one side could win prevents a first strike being launched in the first place. So the rational man must assume that if he attacks, he too will face attack.
MAD prevented a nuclear war for decades.
The weak point of course, as Rue has pointed out, is that people are not always rational. Again, consider how close we came during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Castro had the button on his desk, they'd still be waiting for Washington to stop glowing.
In any case, the article and the idea are slightly suspect given the publication. Here is a blurb from the "About Us" page....
...Since its inception in 1945, and increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s, the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated questions: the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States, and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of political correctness and the collapse of critical standards....So let's see... what country has nuclear weapons that a lot of people scratching their heads about? Hmm....
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Israel did agree...long ago...but no deal. Israel's "neighbors" chose war instead....and lost.
That sort of thinking is what has made the problem so intractable. Your point has been argued here, and can be argued many more times, but such arguments never go anywhere except to make people retreat even more doggedly to their positions.
It is hard to see why anybody would adopt such a position unless they believed that israel should continue on its curent course until it has driven out all of the Palestinians or at least completely dispossessed them of their land. Since Israel is at the negotiations, it would appear to be a position that it does not hold - unless of course you believe the Israelis are there for the most cynical of reasons.
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This is patently false...the USA definitely "imposed" a solution on Imperial Japan. It has worked out nicely.
Now I understand your position on nuclear arms.
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I also recall staring at a prostate man on a sidewalk in south India until I noticed that his chest was still moving: not dead yet.
If Oleg had chosen to live his life anywhere else, he probably would be dead now.
What? You've been to India and you think Oleg is weird?
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I don't like to watch my own movies - I fall asleep in my own movies.
---Robert De Niro
Heh heh...
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If someone doesn't start it no one will follow. Whats the use in throwing your hands up in the air and saying 'oh well'?
That's why Kyoto was at least a start, and one that demanded buy-in.
Harper's unilateral precedent is bad news. Every country on earth can set its own goals as they please? Good luck.
As for Baird, this is a guy who has always made his living as a lap-dog. First Harris, now Steve. Same for Flaherty. A couple of loud chihuahas. Yap yap yap.
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Only 6 figures? Anybody can join an Internet forum and make outrageous claims even to suggest that "anthropologists" go on "excavations".
Lay it out, August1991. What is your argument?
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Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own.
---Mike: The Deer Hunter
A movie quote. I love it. You need to get out more, paleface.
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Thankfully my kid didn't play hockey, he chose rugby instead. A gentlemans game.
Good luck with those dental bills!
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I'm retired from the Armed Forces and went on to work on my profession in anthropology. While in the CAF I was able to go to many places overseas (at the expense of our so gratious CAF) and participate in middle east excavations...
Nice attitude. I hope the Canadian anthropoligical establishment recognizes your value. A lot of them spend so much time waiting on grant applications....
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... you're free to view the President as a civilian...I choose to view him...or possibly soon to be 'her'...as America's #1 soldier.
I agree with you there. The difference, of course, is that this is one soldier who we, the people get to appoint.
Too bad for you, eh?
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To me, real vindication comes when people who weren't true believers in the first place confess to being wrong.
And to be balanced about it, there are no Clinton haters in that camp either. What was the last US President who could lay claim to that mantle?
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But let's examine this a little closer. You no doubt support police officers, who put themselves in danger everyday, protecting you from the depredations of evil warmongers and werthugs like me, but I assume you're not a cop.
OK, deal with me.
Sure I support cops. They put themselves in danger every day? Yes they do, but their mortality and morbidity rates are lower than fishers and firefighters.
Even more, I support civilian police commissions. Civilian oversight. Don't like it? Work for a security company.
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Sometimes we should conprehencd these phenomena from a historic view point. George Washington got hundreds of Africian slaves in his home, but we can hardly condemn he was a brute barbarian because nearly every rich white guys got slaves in their home then.
The "genocide" after communists ruled China in 1950s were more like the revenge in my country's history rather than its communism property. Both my grandfather (my mother's father) and my wife's grandfather were officials of fomer Guomintang government. Her grandfather was executed in 1950s but my grandfather was survived and even got a job in new government. What is the different between them?
Because my grandfather worked in a former government department in charge of administration water and electricity something so he had not opportunity to involve any business of surpressing communists. But my wife's grandfather was the head of a county, he had to do someting to support his government to suppress communist. Former government was not mercy to treat those communists and most western and China human rights activists always fogret our country only kissed off our emperor less than 30 years then, and they also easily forget the guillotines in Europe then white guys kissed off their kings.
I think communism is wrong because it is based on hatred. It is not the hatred of foreigner like racism and Nazism, but it is a "selfhatred" in a nation by inciting the poor people to hate the rich people. This is another part of why there were a lot of persecution happened in communism country. If a person who was tought to believe his good live was stolen by another guy and he made him lived in beggary and nasty, what would he react to this one whom he believed hurt him so lot?
I once had a job where I was supervised by a woman who had escaped when the Guomintang were being driven out. She and her family were considered part of the Guomintang, although she was an academic. In Canada, she was a valuable part of the scientific plumbing. A brilliant scientist who had to settle for less than what she might have been.
This is exactly the kind of thing she used to say.
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I guess you missed...
platoon
full metal jacket
apocalypse now
farenheit 911
born on the fourth of july
forrest gump
jarhead
lions for lambs
syrianna
rendition
in the valley of elah
and on and on and on...............
show me one of these movies where hollywood makes USA the good guys and the midevil beheading mass murdering dictator the bad guys and tell me with a straight face you haven't been indoctrinated to actually believe the trash you'r being fed by the hardcore left wing hollywood
I understand rendition, but I'd be pretty careful about using a Hollywood movie to argue politics...
Rules Based or Power Based
in The Rest of the World
Posted
A lot of the debate on MapleLeafWeb seems to revolve around rules versus power. What do you think?