ScottSA

This is ridiculous. No, he's just talking above your level of comprehension. Consider this: A jeep crashes into a tree at the side of a busy highway. Hundreds of people see it happen, and testify later that a semi veered at the jeep just before it crashed. Later, it turns out that someone videotaped the thing happening, and sure enough, it shows a semi veering toward the jeep just before the jeep shot off the highway into the tree. The trouble is, there are a couple of unanswered questions: all four tires on the jeep are flat, and the windshield was found an unreasonable distance away. A tire specialist, when pushed, claims that it's not likely that all four tires would go flat from an accident of this type, and that in fact he's never seen it happen before. An aircraft designer, when pushed, claims that it's impossible for the windshield to fly the distance it did, given the speed the jeep was travelling, and the aerodynamics of the windshield. So what is the obvious conclusion? A ) That a large plot involving the top echelons of Ford and Chevrolet engineered through nefarious means explosions that blew out all four tires, and in a residual blast the windshield too, so that people would think jeeps are dangerous and stop buying them, allowing Ford and Chevrolet to introduce a new line of vehicles which will absorb the former market for jeeps. B ) That the semi caused the accident and some unexplained things happened. Riverwind is trying to introduce you to the standard of reasonable probability or, in other words, Occam's razor.

Which was the case 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago. And will be the case 10,000 years from now. So? Except it was NOT the case 100 nor 1000 nor 10,000 years ago You have an amazing ability to ignore reality by just declaring that it doesn't exist. Do you similarly deny that the ice age occured and that perhaps it was once colder?

Both my grandfather and his brother were there, and both survived the war. Mel (my grandfather's brother) wrote a series of letters home and I still have them. One he wrote on the eve of Vimy and another a couple days after: the first one just says that they're getting ready for something big, and the one after that said it "was a rough show", but that's about it. It's ironic that he survived all that and came home and died in 1919 of influenza.

Pardon me Ms Catchme, but ya'll need to take a pill. This ain't the 90s anymore when it was incumbent upon people to accept hare-brained nonsense about the "war on women". It's refreshing to see women looking at things from a sane perspective again. Some people panic and do the wrong thing. The wrong thing in this case was continuing to push whatever buttons she was pushing. You may argue that she shouldn't have to go along with the eViL mAn!11111!; that she had the right not to; and that's fine. The problem is that she's dead, so it's a hollow victory at best. Any police negotiation expert will tell you that in a hostage situation, one of the things not recommended is for the negotiator to run screaming into the house shouting abuse at the hostage taker. It's not her fault that someone shot her, and it is the fault of the person who pulled the trigger and no one else's, but this isn't about eVilMeNraar!1!!111. It's about human nature.

Oh I don't know...the Great Captains of Industry, including the Kelloggs, are all puppetmasters too, and since they control the minds of politicians and plebes alike, I'd say its relevant. I spose there are always grounds to argue for banning folks, but I suspect the argument that control of the Polis doesn't have anything to do with politics is a little on the weak side.

Why did I know the left would be johnny on the spot to assure us that the situation is dire indeed? Tune in next week for the Attack of the Global Warmingula!

Your point about Commienism is a very good one. Western enlightened thought led to Chinese civil war and victory for the communists - which to many is one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Admiral Perry...wasn't he the one who put a few rounds into Yokohama in order to open Japan up for trade? Or maybe that was the Russian guy. And you're correct again. The Great White Fleet did indeed force Japan to seek western methods in order to become a great power; conquering Korea, battling China, siezing Manchuria and so on and so forth and a fat lot of good it did. I wonder what the benefits of Japanese colonialism the colonized profited from? Must have been something that makes the Pacific war worth it for the Philipino's and chinese, and Indonesians. They should be writing a letter of thanks to the Emperor. Exploiting others by force of arms, wich is precisely what colonialism is, is not a good thing. Considering that Ideas are usually transported around in books, do you suppose enlightened ideas would have gotten around even without the economic exploitation of the ignorant savages? True, the Maxim did a fine job of spreading ideas. But then, what do we care wether they do it our way or not? You seem to be arguing that the west should have kept the Japanese and Chinese weak and ignorant so that they didn't get uppity and start warmongering and taking control of their environment and stuff. You know...keep all those quaint little customs and funny pigtails and harmless myths and such, and stay out of our faces. Is that what you'd prefer?

there is nothing accidental, incidental or unintentional about a howitzer or a rocket or a daisy cutter Your point? Has the US dropped a daisy cutter on a civilian population center lately unbeknownst to everyone but you?

I doubt that is the case today. counting all of the abortion clinic bombings and FBI shootouts in OK or ID and all their attendant support groups, I guess it was at least true before George Bush became the Al Qaeda Recruiters' Poster Boy. Certainly, the Al Qaeda bandwagon was given a monstrous boost by the illegal invasion of Iraq. No Woody. No. Not even in the same ballpark. But nice try. Well, not really a nice try, but whatever.

A tax which replaced the Manufacturer's Sales Tax. The MST punished Canadian manufactured products and made them less competitive vis-a-vis imported goods. Did you support the Liberal's opposition to the tax in 1993? Or their opposition to the cut in the GST in 2006? Or both. Don't forget their promise to abolish it too...

You obviously don't have much faith in Indians, do you? Do they have primitive brains that can't function at the same level as you? Are they somehow not quite the intellectual equal of you? I've always found the phenomenon of lilly white liberal racism to be kinda odd, given that lilly white liberals are the ones trotting around making sure no one says what lilly white liberals are thinking. Some of the arguments against abolishing slavery were similar: let the Blacks go and they won't be able to survive. What...5 generations or so isn't enough for the noble Indian to aclimatize to civilization? It only took my Scottish hiland savage forebearers a generation or so to stop shagging sheep, stealing cattle and raping Englishwomen, but to your mind the Indians need more time?

And only genuine retards refuse to understand the difference between murder and accidental death.

Talking about your left and right frontal lobes again Woody?

Yuck yuck. How does your autonomic nervous system keep you breathing with such minimal neural firing?

I think it will take more than that to make them give up their travois and tipis. Really though, how will making people on the reserve pay taxes do that? How are they not already in the 21st Century? Well, that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? The treaties are defended by an appeal to the alleged wishes of the noble savage (and I use that term advisedly, since it speaks to the intent and ethos of the treaty system) to return to a sylvan "traditional" harmony with nature. In any other paradigm, one would assume a desire to return to the stone age meant a return to the stone age, with its concurrent life expectancy of 16, chasing dinner, and clubbing each over the head in coupcounting fits of bloodshed, but in Canada it means making up a bunch of "traditions" like hunting with 50 calibre machine guns, fishing with dynamite and tracking with GPS and snowmobiles, then facilitating the lot with enormous sums of money and free healthcare to help folks live in the stoneage with all the benefits of not living in the stoneage. What adds idiocy to lunacy is that if anyone attacks what is clearly a racist system of apartied, or calls for the equality of all Canadians, they are called "racist".

So we've established that white Muslim leftists did it. I sent our analysis off to the RCMP but they haven't got back to thank us yet.

Absolutely. Hardly warranted at all. I mean if Iran had at least sawn their heads off and sold the snuff flicks, there'd be some reason for the deliberate flaunting of international convention.

Peter, m'boy...where d'you spose communism originated? I always thought it was a product of western enlightenment thought, but perhaps it was a Confucian offshoot? Ever heard of Admiral Perry? Sun Yat Sen? Horns of the Bull? Ah yes, the Belgians. I assume you're talking about the Congo; the great shining example of the post-colonial revisionists. You are aware, perhaps, that the Congo is not the totality of Africa? Need I point out that you didn't actually answer the question beyond a farcical flippant "perhaps"? That's not an answer. Nor is petty singular nitpicking (that happens to be wrong) an answer. Africa may have driven itself back to the iron age since colonialism left, but at least it's butchering itself from the comfort of automobiles instead of on foot by means of impi. I assume by all this that you have no real answer, and that you know, deep down, that colonialism ultimately did more good than hard. If for no other reason than that it accelerated technological and political diffusion.

Language ought to be taken out of the hands of illiterate comma misplacers. says the only auto-typing, 'anti-dictionary' Oh, you made it back from playing in traffic, eh Woody?

Yes, but neither Canada nor any other state in the world is likely to become libertarian anarchist anytime soon. If we're dealing with philosophy and not praxis, fair enough because I'm a newcomer to this debate, but even so it seems to me that if the point has to be dragged by the hair out beyond the pale of the political spectrum and beaten into shape by hypotheticals to make an association between the size of government and copyright law, the point is strained at best. Yes, but disembowelment would ensure that the thief doesn't do the deed again. The coke might then be worth a small something, attached as it is to the disembodied bowel which can be dried and hung as a conversation piece over the shopkeeper's till, thus generating future business. After all, once out of the body, the bowel is worth no more to the thief than the coke to the shopkeeper. Everyone goes home happy.

Iraqi citizens aid security forces Tuesday, 03 April 2007 By Spc. Carl N. Hudson Combined Press Information Center BAGHDAD — An Iraqi Army general and a spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq held a press conference concerning the progress of Fardh Al-Qanoon at the Combined Press Information Center Sunday. Iraqi Army Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi and U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mark Fox, an MNF-I spokesman, provided an update on recent achievements by Iraqi and Coalition forces and encouraged the Iraqi population to keep providing more information leading to the capture of terrorists. “We’ve seen some initial progress, but our work will not be accomplished in days or weeks, but will require a sustained effort over the course of many months,” said Fox. Along with the contribution of over 5,000 tips from Iraqi citizens, Iraqi and Coalition forces seized over 300 weapons caches, detained over 1,400 suspects and cleared over 300 improvised explosive devices in March including the rescue of a kidnapped family in Doura, Iraq, last week http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/Fr...y%20forces.aspx

Baghdad ‘Surge’ Produces Early Successes, Official Says By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, April 4, 2007 – Murders and kidnappings, the hallmarks of sectarian violence, have decreased in Baghdad since reinforcements of U.S. and Iraqi security forces began to flow into the city in mid-February as part of Operation Fahrd al-Qanoon, a senior U.S. military official said in Baghdad today. “A clear reduction in the number of kidnappings and execution-style murders” has taken place across Baghdad since Fahrd al-Qanoon, or “Enforce the Law,” was launched to secure and tamp down violence in Baghdad and western Iraq, Navy Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox, spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said to representatives of U.S.-based veterans groups during a telephone conference call. http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/Fr...ial%20Says.aspx

:lol: So speaks the resident intellectual.

I think it's pretty much the Iraqis who are eradicating the Iraqis, and the Palestinians are eradicating the bejesus out of the Palestinians too. Have you watched the news in the last two or three years? Oh, and btw, smallpox killed the Indians, not Bwana.

I see a lot of people arguing past each other and entering conceptually hazy waters here. What does big or little government have to do with copyright law? How can a specious appeal against "corporations" transfer whatever moral value it was supposed to have any further than the anti-capitalist point it was presumably resting upon? How can one claim that the enforcement of laws is morally wrong by virtue of the fact that it is funded as a common good by taxpayers? The simple transference of that argument is to argue that all sanctions against illegality are immoral by virtue of being funded as the common good that they are. After all, is a stolen coke anyone else's concern than the shopkeeper from whom it was stolen? Is it somehow wrong to ask the public to fund enforcement of the shopkeeper's rights on the grounds that it is only his concern? I am the future writer of the second greatest book ever written. Maybe the third greatest book; I'm still debating that one. When I write the book, I expect to be paid royalties for it. It is now my property, morally and legally, and it will continue to be my property, and it SHOULD continue to be my property and the property of my heirs, just as my other property is and will, until such time as my property no longer has value. If someone steals it and pretends to be the author, they are stealing my property. If they read it without paying me, they are doing the same thing as they would be if they walked into a corner store and sucked back a bottle of coke without paying for it. It doesn't matter whether the stolen product resides in their bowels or their head; it is nonetheless stolen property. It is, presumably, even more egregious a moral outrage if the property resides in their head, because one would hope it remains there longer than the coke remains in their bladder. From a purely utilitarian moral standpoint, if I have no copyright protection, nor a reasonable expectation that such protection will be enforced, I may not write the book, and THEN you'll be sorry. And in fact no one will write books, and all that will be left is drinking a surfiet of coke and dying a hideous death of coke bloating and possibly brain freeze.