Moonlight Graham

I agree. However, they are still authoritarian. Some scholars and such argue that it isn't the kind of government that is most important for countries to develop (ie: authoritarian vs democratic etc.), but the stability of said governments and its ability to govern with strong institutions, rule of law etc. Would a democratic country with high corruption and a weak hold on the rule of law, bureaucratic control/effectiveness etc. be better than a more authoritarian government that is more effective at providing good governance and embedded autonomy for the country? Not only corporations, but rich countries in general through unbalanced trade agreements, terms of aid/loans, etc. etc. etc. I agree they are sovereign states and have the ability in most cases to do whatever they wish. What seems to occur is that developing countries agree to crappy/unfair/exploitative terms of relations thinking that the benefits still outweigh they costs of not agreeing to them at all and being cut off from trade/markets or aid etc.

Like China? And you're right, maybe some of these developing countries should try cutting themselves off from the global economy. Who knows. Development is an insanely complex problem. Like a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle missing a few pieces.

Agreed. The harsh reality of capitalism and human selfishness.

You have a point. Yes the developing countries knew the terms of the deals (well, i assume). However, developing countries got many of the loans at dirt-cheap rates when rich countries were eager to invest money in the 60's and 70's, and especially after the oil price boom of 1973 and oil-rich countries to find ways to invest their new riches. But the developing countries then got screwed when the same rich countries they borrowed from dramatically jacked up interested rates (led by the U.S.) to curb economic inflation in the early 80's, late 70's. You can make the argument the developing countries should have known the risks, but they further got screwed when they had to accept exploitive terms by the rich countries in order to restructure any repayment terms or accept loans or aid in the first place. If the industrialized world wants to bring the developing countries into the global capitalist system and demand or force them to accept neo-liberalization trade/economic policies, they at least should make the policies fair and equal to what the rich countries have to give the developing countries a hope in hell of competing & thriving instead of getting raped for their markets, resources, and cheap labour.

This is the second time in the last couple of days you have referred to a black person or group as some kind of sub-human "creatures". I'm no lawyer and don't know the exact laws regarding hate speech, but you are at least walking a thin line. I hope the moderators review your remarks.

Where did i say it should be illegal?? I don't share you view, but you have every right to state your preferences for your daughter and choose whomever you yourself wish to procreate with. As for the other crazy stuff you probably love to become law... Mixing of races is perfectly natural. Whatever your opinions of it is constructed within your mind. But nature and genetics makes it that a white person and a black person can have a 100% healthy baby together just the same as 2 white people can have a 100% healthy baby together. What is unnatural are 2 siblings or cousins etc. having a baby together, which can cause abnormalities and whatnot in the baby. I'm not going to respond to any more of your racial bullcrap posts any more because its a waste of my time. You speak of people being "brainwashed" by the liberal media/universities etc. Yes our opinions, morals, identity etc. are greatly influences by our environment. What's funny is that you yourself have also almost certainly been "brainwashed" by someone close to you, whether your parents, a sibling, or some other family member or someone else you've known who has deeply planted this sick racist crap in your brain. Your beliefs are not your own original observations, you have been taught/told at some point that whites are superior to blacks and you are just following along. All this science you link and your views on genetics are just rubbish. You are trying to logically/rationally legitimize your racism to yourself and others, when in fact deep down i'm willing to bet the farm that you just straight-up despise black people and what other non-whites are also included. They simply disgust you and you fear them. A rational/logical person looks at the evidence first, and then establishes a conclusion based on the evidence. You have clearly long ago formed your main thesis and are searching for evidence to justify it. Good luck with life.

Very tough hypothetical question to ponder. If the extinction of the 1 million other species was our fault then i'd probably choose us to go extinct. If it's simply an "us or them" question, then maybe i'd choose us to live, i don't know. 1 million is a hell of a lot of species. A pretty ridiculous statements. Tell any biologist that we aren't part of the ecosystem and they'd likely all laugh. Millions of organisms crawling around us both inside and outside our bodies rely on us, and in many cases us on them. A mosquito sucks on our blood to feed itself and its young. And we of course rely on many different plants and animals for survival. And no we don't "control" the ecosystem. We can shape and influence parts of it, but control it entirely is ridiculous. We are at the mercy of the ecosystem for our survival, and our technology cannot remove that fact. If all plant-life on this planet were to die humans would die from lack of oxygen or CO2 poisoning or some other scenario, hard to know which would come first. The point is that we would die & couldn't stop it.

Ya this is pretty much it. Although the Canadian Constitution is not simply a written document like the U.S. Constitution, there are also many unwritten Conventions which are a part of the Constitution (ie: the role/functions of the PM was never written down/mentioned anywhere in the Constitution Act, 1867). Also, the Charter doesn't just protect rights against government infringement, but protects these rights legally against the infringement of anyone, government or no.

Lictor, you focus so much of genetics, so let me ask you this: Let's say you had a daughter in her 20's, and she came home with a black man she said she was in love with him and they might get engaged. This black man was a doctor and very intelligent, well-spoken, never had been in trouble, and came from a very good family. In fact most his black family, including his siblings, parents, grandparents, and a long line of others, were well-educated, economically advantaged, and worked in excellent jobs such as lawyers, engineers, accountants, doctors etc. However, your daughter also said she's in love with a white man and is torn between the black man and white man and who she wants to marry. This white man works as a janitor, doesn't have his high school diploma, doesn't seem very intelligent, and has had a few run-ins with the law. He comes from a rough family with virtually all his relatives not seemingly very intelligent, educated, or well-behaved either. So which man would you personally, selfishly, prefer your daughter to marry if you had to pick one? The black man or white man? And no cop-outs like "whomever she's happier with" etc. Pick one.

I'M GLAD WE HAVE THESE NEW STEALTH FIGHTERS!!! NOW WE CAN BLOW UP SOME STUFF AND NOBODY WILL BE THE WISER! KApow!!!!!!

That's some laughable and somewhat scary bullsh*t right there.

lol blacks are blacks. So basically your claim is that blacks are less educated, less wealthy, and more likely to commit crimes etc. than white people because of genetics. Good luck proving that one. But i guess the only thing that matters is that you've proven it to yourself.

Different races have genetic dissimilarities. And this is news? This just in: black people have big lips and white people have pale skin!

I never said we had to live in PERFECT equalibrium. Of course that's impossible. You obviously didn't read what i said. Here it is again: That's one of the craziest, most egotistical things i've ever heard! Wow. Not worthy of a comment. I have no idea, i'm no expert on the history of civilizations. What civilization are you worried about? North American? Western? All humanity? Take a cue from nature itself. There are countless animal species that are many millions of years old, even hundreds of millions of years old. Sharks are over 400 million years old. Have sharks continued to grow in numbers all that time? Of course not. If they had, they would have completely overrun the oceans in vast numbers, likely eating all their prey into extinction by now, thus destroying themselves. Sharks have obviously found some semblance of balance in the ecosystem in order to sustain their existence without permanent population growth. You obviously have great faith in humanity's ability to harness technology to sustain themselves. I'm much more skeptical. In the period of the greatest technological advancements in human history ie: since the Industrial Revolution, humans have managed to use these advancements to inflict an amazing amount of harm to their own environment, and our current rate of consumption of natural resources & damage to the environment is unsustainable. 99% of all species that have existed on the earth have gone extinct. We'll see if humans adapt & change their current course of selfish unsustainability or suffer the fate that the other 99% of species have.

My stance is that 7 billion people on the planet is more than enough. I don't necessarily call for a smaller/declining population, but the growth needs to stop at some point. Hopefully the biggest population boom is over. Humans need to live in relative equilibrium with nature, with no massive growth or massive decline in pop. Sure at any given time the pop will be growing or shrinking, but to continue to grow is insane & unsustainable. Humans have put enough strain on the earth as it is. I really don't give a f*** about technological advancement etc. decreasing somewhat if we go from 7 billion to 5 billion, i'm more concerned with things like humans over-fishing the seas, continually polluting the environment with our discarded wastes, and deforestation and habitat destruction for the many species we are supposed to share this lovely planet with. How many species are humans responsible for sending into extinction or endangerment? 7 billion is good, time to call it a day.

Could care less about Lloyd. I usually watch CBC's "The National" anyways since it repeats like 5 times a day on 2 channels.

Actually i'm right. An IGO is a type of international organization, so the UN is both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_organization The UN works in partnership with NGO's, but i can't see how the UN itself would be classified as an NGO.

What?? How does declining the population or declining growth = zero humans? Kind of a slippery slope argument.

Pretty sure i've watched part of this doc before on TV. Was probably on "the passionate eye" on the CBC. Good doc.

First, let me just say that i do think overpopulation is a big problem, and overall, world resources & the environment will have difficultly sustaining an ever-booming global population. However, as i've already stated, i agree with Ghost that hunger is a distribution problem and a money problem, not an overpopulation problem. I can't explain it in one paragraph and won't do it in 10 because i just dont have the time/energy, and unfortunately i can't provide any links because much of what i've read about the problem is in books not online sources. Here's 2 pioneering books to check out: "Poverty and Families: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation" by Amartya Sen, published in 1981, and "Refashioning Nature: Food, Ecology, and Culture" by Goodman and Redclift, from 1991. They help describe exactly WHY people in the world go hungry. Basically, it is a problem greatly caused by the globalization of food trade and liberalization of trade markets since 1945. a huge player in this has been the USA (though the consequences were largely unforeseen), which was producing huge food surpluses at the end of WWII. These surpluses became cheap food exports, and cheap imported food into developing countries made it unattractive for subsistence farmers in developing countries to continue growing these crops because the now-cheap global food prices meant they made far less money when they sold their crops to locals. The production of subsistence crops in the developing world for local consumption has dropped drastically since WWII because they couldn't compete with 1st-world production, a problem made worse by 1st-world countries heavily subsidizing their agriculture producers. Hence, a dependence on food aid was created (and food aid is obviously a short-term solution). The decline in subsistence crop production in the developing world meant a big increase on large-scale, export-oriented cash-crop production (coffee etc.). Peasants were thrown off the land because their labour was no longer needed, or their land bought out by multinational corporations. So there is a greater concentration of land in a smaller # of people. A lot of local farmers in ie: latin America were encouraged to sell their land to corporations and move closer to cities and sweatshops where they lived on property with no land therefore they couldn't grow their own food, and during times of economic turmoil could not afford to buy food or had means to grow food so they would go hungry. This large crop production has also caused environment damage from pesticides, fertilization, and improper irrigation. Frequently (as Amartya Sen points out in the book), times of famine have actually occurred when global food production was high, but local economic factors led to the inability for people to buy food from local shops. The food exists to feed starving people, but starving people do not have the money to buy food & largely no longer have the means to grow it themselves. This is how people living in the most lushly vegetated areas on earth go hungry. I don't know how to solve this problem. Obviously the global food regime is hurting developing countries in favour of 1st world ones. The whole system has become f****d. To start, global trade rules governing agriculture must be changed, and SAP's forcing 3rd world countries to liberalize their trade markets must be curtailed. The whole system of global food trade needs to be fixed. Sadly, most governments along with institutions like the IMF & World Bank still think hunger is a problem of overpopulation, not distribution & purchasing ability.

The UN isn't an NGO, its an IGO (intergovernmental organization). It's largely created/run/funded by governments and/or their official representatives.

Yes i'm aware that a lot of the tests were underground. Atmospheric/ground/outer-space/underwater tests were curtailed under the PTBT. Underground tests are better for the environment and to humans), but i'd still not be convinced that it would be perfectly safe, or the radiation somehow gets into an underground water vein and into drinking water. You're pretty brave (or stupid haha just kidding) to stick around during those tests. I've watched a great documentary on nuclear tests called Trinity And Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, its narrated by William Shatner and show amazing/beautiful footage of test explosions, and recently declassified footage from both the U.S. & USSR. It also has an amazing original orchestral score, performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

lol. Sucks to be him right now. Actually maybe it doesn't, he owns a ship filled with oil! That beats me.

I disagree. The spill may affect many Canadians if the oil leaks into municipal water supplies. It has also stopped trade with ships being unable to go through the Seaway locks.

Are you kidding me? Your article won't load for me for some reason. But are you saying because of Bangladesh and Iran, this is proof that the global pop won't continue to grow? From the book i'm looking at right now (printed in 2008 by Oxford University Press, using stats from the UN), it says that the data says the global population has quintupled since the early 1800's, and is expected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 10 billion in 2050. It also says over 50 percent of this increase is expected to occur in only 7 countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Hey, maybe the situation in Bangladesh has changed. But does that mean its changed in the other countries? You ask to explain Bangladesh? Well since i cant access the article, what is its explanation for the pop growth change given in the article? It also seems weird to me the pop situation would change that drastically there in only a handful of years.