ScottSA

Sweden is under constant attack. Just not yet with bombs. Been to Sweden lately?

It's sad when someone resorts to running around namecalling instead of defending their argument. I loved this one though. I bet you don't even see the howling irony of this post you made: Almost straight out of Das Capital or What is to be Done?

Reality intruding perhaps? "It can't happen here" is always the accepted mantra before it does. Now I know the feeling my Irish cousins lived with for years. They told some horrendous stories of what the almighty British army did to them. They had the bad luck to be Catholic in Northern Ireland. Maybe it's the British army now. Or the Templars. Or anyone else. Anyone but the real enemy, right? I mean, little brown people are always victims, never aggressors, right? After all, they didn't do all the nasty things that white folk did and should have to pay for forever and ever amen. We should celebrate Islam, because it's a religion of peace, not like that nasty Christianity, right? Is head-in-the-sandism a permanent desease or does it eventually wear off in the face of reality?

You're in effect saying that you don't have a clue what you're talking about; something that is appalingly obvious from your previus posts. No one here is an international legal "expert," since that usually requires one to have written a masters or doctoral thesis on a given subject, or have in depth post doc work on the subject. But that doesn't mean that everyone who hasn't done those things is on a level playing field in knowledge on the subject. You clearly don't even understand the very basics of international law, nor how it is codified or implimented. "Common sense" is not a substitute for knowledge. You can argue that something "ought" to be from the standpoint of common sense, but you cannot viably argue that something legally "is" from any standpoint other than knowledge of the legality.

You may not have noticed, but he's not doing a very good job of "making his country's wealth work for his country's people." Something lefties never seem to quite grasp is the fact that wealth is created, and is not just a big static pile of gold in a zero sum game. All the rhetoric that comes out of the NDP at election time, and from the starry eyed revolutionaries of all stripes has no basic grounding in reality. "Make the rich pay" sounds great, but the trouble of course is that what it means in praxis is "curb production and make everyone pay." Nationalizing industry is a great idea on paper, but once you do it, and chase all the expertise out the door, you have a huge noisy pile of machinery that's pretty much good for nothing. Having oil is not the same as getting it out of the ground and selling it. Oh, and nationalizing industry is robbery.

Reality intruding perhaps? "It can't happen here" is always the accepted mantra before it does.

Ah yes, Need is always an interesting point. For example, succesive liberalconservative governments have consistently subsidized big oil developments because they say, that we need them. Without as far as I know ever having done an analysis of how we might alternatively need less. Perhaps the governments have a need for the tax money so that they can subsidize the oil companies. I don't think there are many Canadians who need to live in poorly insulated and drafty housing, and yet we need to use all kinds of energy to keep warm. There aren't many who can't fit on a bus and yet we need to build 16 lane freeways because we all need to drive alone to work or play or to the grocery store and back. Very few of us are going to be professional race car drivers but surprisingly many of us need 300 hp engines to drag our sorry butts through town. And the need to get people to realize that their incredible wastefulness is going to make us all poor before our time is tyranny. What do you suppose the ads telling us that we need, need, need, need, is? You don't truly believe these Marxian talking points do you?

Many assumed that the Oklahoma bombing was orchestrated by Muslims - they were later shown to be wrong. I would be surprised these bombs were planted by anyone other than muslims but it is not reasonable to assume that it must be muslims given the information we have at this time. Right. I think it's Bush.

This logic is often used by the left to argue for withdrawal, and it astounds me. The fact that an enemy may like you less because you attack him is hardly news, and to avoid a confrontation on those grounds is to outdo even the great French tradition of an unbroken string of abject routs from 1066 to date.

You clearly don't understand the way the UN works. You, and many other folks like you, seem to imagine that the UN is modelled along the lines of a domestic legal system, with all the formulations and coercions of a domestic legal system built in. It isn't. Let's look at the response of the US to Afghanistan. The US took unilateral action and attacked Afghanistan. At the time, the same crop of "experts" leapt up and announced that that invasion was illegal too. It wasn't. The US invoked article 51, an overriding clause abrogating everything else in Chapter VII. The UNSC subsequently upheld the US actions, but even if it hadn't, the only way the action would have been deemed "illegal" is if the UNSC had issued a resolution condemning it. You'll note that this has no parallel in domestic law at all, either in particular or in fundamental theory. There is no Leviathan in the international arena, and the closest thing that comes to it is the UNSC. The UN is an ad hoc body of self-interested states...closer in conception to the Paris mob than to any body of domestic law. The Charter is a lose collection of grand and extremely vague principles...even the Charter itself has chunks of it that the member nations ignore...articles 46 and 47 come immediately to mind, but there are others too. In short, the UN is not a judge with a rulebook in front of it, and there is no police force. Policing is done on a posse system. Your immediate argument, after having been shown the light on the others, is that 1441 somehow abrogated 687 or cast it in some new light . It didn't. That's not how UNSC resolutions work. Here's something you may not realize about UNSC resolutions: Look at the text of 1441: “Recalling all its previous relevant resolutions, in particular its resolutions 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 678 (1990) of 29 November 1990, 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, 715 (1991) of 11 October 1991, 986 (1995) of 14 April 1995, and 1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999, and all the relevant statements of its President, “Recalling also its resolution 1382 (2001) of 29 November 2001 and its intention to implement it fully..." Why do you think those clauses are in there? Why do you think this clause is there: “Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area..." What do you think this means: "...678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means..." What those clauses mean is that far from abrogating the previous resolutions, 1441 is reaffirming them in the strongest possible terms, and actually adding to them. 1441 didn't override anything; it reaffirmed everything and added to it. The second part of your argument seems to be that 1441 didn't specifically "automatize" the use of force, so therefore the US acted illegally. To bolster this argument, you attempt to make it seem that the US merely took 1441 and attacked Iraq on the fact of it without any further ado. That's not the way it happened, though. What 1441 said is that this is a last chance for Iraq to comply. Several weeks after the resolution, Iraq was still found to be in material breach on numerous counts, and in fact 1441 DID authorize force in the event of non-compliance. It was in the event of non-compliance that res 1441 authorized "...authorized Member States to use all necessary means...". So no, 1441 didn't automatize the use of force, but force wasn't used automatically either...only after Blix's subsequently found Iraq in material breach. In that case the procedures were laid out in the resolution, and those procedures were followed to the tee. So all the readings you presented in your post, issued at the time of 1441, are merely stating that the resolution, in and of itself, didn't give anyone the authority to attack out of hand that day. It did however give member states the authority to attack under further non-compliance. That is what happened. Finally, if in fact the invasion had been deemed "illegal," the UNSC would have had to issue a subsequent resolution condemning the invasion. Simply calling something illegal from the sidelines is meaningless.

The Sex Party doesn't sound very inclusive. What about the virgins? Maybe someone should start a "Virgin Party of B.C."? I think they have one already... They're called Young Conservatives...... I didn't find the young ladies in that party to be particularly virginal when I was there...quite the contrary. The young NDP, on the other hand, hated men, so that didn't make for loose trousers...thank God...have you ever seen a young NDP woman? Yuck! LOL are you sure they weren't men in drag? The NDP are rather fond of the transvestites as a voting block. I don't know...maybe they were men in drag, but I thought it was only women who got those dumbo ear thingies hanging from their triceps. NDP women have those, and just to make things worse they have acne on them to boot. Sometimes you can't see that part though; untrimmed armpit hair hides it well.

True poverty is an absolute measurement, not a relative measurement. One cannot viably claim that a certain segment of the Saudi citizenry is "poor," for example, by virtue of the fact that they have only two cars as compared to the upper crust which has seven. Only through socialist eyes does poverty become a relative thing. Only when one posits economic egalitarianism as the ideal does it even make sense to measure relative distance between economic poles.

Partly true. For example, giving large cheques away to the unemployed is bad policy, but making sure they poor have access to medical care and especially education is certainly positive. We also see that countries with great inequality have much higher crime rates and thus can hamper development. Taxation is certainly an annoyance, but has the benefit of preventing money from accumulating on the top, also hampering development. I agree that the playing field should be level, but I don't see the role of taxation as redistributive. The role of taxation should be to provide public goods, not prop up a false economy of non-production. So far in Canada, education and medicine is available to everybody, and everybody has an equal opportunity to succeed or fail. It ought not be the government's responsibility to level the end result.

From my links: "Quantum fluctuation is the temporary appearance of energetic particles out of nothing, as allowed by the Uncertainty Principle" "This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles" "Quantum fluctuations may have been very important in the origin of the structure of the universe: according to the model of inflation the ones that existed when inflation began were amplified and formed the seed of all current observed structure." Again, my links were only intended to be an introduction to the topic. I suggest reading further on the subject if you want to learn more. I'm sure there are plenty of books out there which are much more in depth, and much better than the articles I posted. As for the rest of your post, you are clearly trolling, and I try to avoid feeding trolls as much as possible. Otherwise, they keep coming back for more. This doesn't appear to refer to matter. It seems to be talking about a precursor to matter, but in any event, claiming that the other side is "trolling" is not much of a defense...just so you know. If you want to cringe away from the argument, at least have the integrity to admit it.

This whole debate is like one over religion. Nobody here has the slightest clue of whether we are causing climate change, or whether we can stop it, or whether it will even be bad. Yet one side is ready and willing to throw everything down the well in a sacrifice to the climate Gods. A lot of people are going to feel very foolish a few years down the road, when the sea has risen about a quarter inch and they've grown tired of jamming the panic button everytime a raindrop hits them.

I think it's a setup by Bush. Notice how the bomb vehicles stayed in their own footprint? Coincidence? I think not.

There are a lot of folks who have no idea the extent of the problem growing in Europe. I'm not as fearful for Britain...they have always taken care of themselves pretty well once they become aware of the threat, but some sections of Europe are plunging headlong into this nightmare with their eyes closed and their noses held. Most notably Belgium and the north western countries. France is finally waking up, but it's becoming a powder keg, and the ironic thing is that it all could have been prevented.

Belief in a deity and knowing its will is not a far cry from belief in sorcerers and witchcraft. That's like saying Mother Theresa is not a far cry from the Mad Mullah.

In that case, here's a few articles for you: Link 1 Link 2 You can do a search on google for more information, but that should get you started. I said the Universe does have a limit. You can check out This article to find out why. I also said time does have a beginning. I've told you several times now that I never claimed to prove God doesn't exist. The first couple of times you tried to bring this up, I thought it was an innocent mistake on your part...but now I KNOW you are just trolling. It's exactly the same argument that theists make to argue that humans can not have popped into existence (through evolution) because they are too complex. This is what I have been saying all along. It seems you now agree with me. The articles you pointed me to say nothing about matter originating from nothing. Again, I'm not a physicist and so am on uncertain ground here, but those articles do not show what you claim they show. You claim not to be trying to prove God doesn't exist when you say this: "The creation of man clearly depends on the existence of God, and the existence of God depends on the creation of God (you can't exist without being created)." ; and then continuing to argue that neither is possible, so if you're not arguing against the existence of God, I have no idea what it is you are arguing about. If I were a cynic, I'd suspect that you're floundering. In any event, you appear to have dropped your original argument completely and are now claiming victory by virtue of my argument. Kudos.

I'm saying the Afghans won't do it when the Canadians are present. The Canadian military this week was just saying that the Afghan Police bug off and make Canada do the work. Often, Canada has to clean up a mess of the ANP's own making. The Afghan military faces similar unreliability quotients. Often the just the allies take on jobs themselves rather than contributing at all. The Catch 22 is of Afghanistan's own making. They want Canadians but as long as they are there, the police and military won't do their jobs. So your solution is to pull Canadians out and leave everything to collapse under the Afghans?

Your grasp of economic principles is not good. One does not "save" capital by gutting demand for a principle market.

Someone should do the job if they want to stabilize th south. That someone ought to be the Afghan. Right now, Canada can't depend on any aspect of the Afghan military or police to handle the job. The police are particularly undependable and contribute more to the problem than they do to help. Karzai's government is increasingly facing opposition both politically and militarily. Afghanistan is now a narco-state and the situation has grown worse not better in the last year. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to argue through the flourish of rhetoric. You seem to be saying that it ought to be the Afghans, and in the same breathe that the Afghans can't do it yet. So in effect you're setting up a catch 22. I'm sure when the Taliban inclined folks in Afghanistan find that the cost is not equal to the benefit of fighting on, and as the Afghans become increasingly able to handle the fight, they;ll shoulder more of the burden.

It's immoral for Canada's government to address a "poverty gap" by redistribution, so the money would be better burned than handed out to undeserving lumpenproletariat. I can't think of anything that would perpetuate the enculturation of poverty faster than making it more comfortable. Such safety net as our society should have ought to be confined to those who cannot help themselves, not to those who don't feel like helping themselves. 'Undeserving'? Forty percent of those living below the poverty line - including people who are homeless - work, most at two and three jobs, at minimum and sub-minimum wages. And the percentage of low-income workers has been climbing. I don't know where your stats are coming from, but I'd suggest that if one were to parse them out, one would find a couple of inconvenient facts: 1 You're using one of the more far-fetched "poverty lines" available out there. There are dozens of alternative formulations for where the "poverty line" is; the silliest one was the NDP's notion in 1993 that anything below $35,000 per annum was below the line. By now this same formulation probably has $50,000 as the poverty line. 2 The low-end jobs are overwhelmingly taken by young people as a stop on the way to better jobs. Or in some cases immigrants, as a matter of choice that they can always remedy by going back home and making even less. 3 Throwing money at people is not going to help them better themselves or their job situation. Making poverty comfortable is going to have precisely the opposite effect.

I think you're absolutely right as to why support fluctuates. It has nothing to do with the mission, and everything to do with the cost of the mission. But those who are paying the price want to continue the mission, so it's not clear to me why some people want to insert themselves and argue on behalf of those who are paying the cost, and do so in opposition to what those who are paying the price want. And it's a form of NIMBY to want to pull out of the south. If everyone is going to stack up doing "humanitarian" duty in the north, the south will never be pacified and all the work in the north will be for naught. Someone has to do the job in the south, and it speaks volumes for Canada that our soldiers, if not the soft underbelly of some of our citizens, are willing and even eager to do it.

That's silly and completely ahistorical. It's also defeatist.