JB Globe

Some of us are good debaters. Some of us are funny. Some of us are even good trolls. You sir, are none of those things.

How old are you?

I totally agree. But people are blowing this out perspective for political purposes as well - this incident doesn't invalidate the rest of the data thats out there, or the reputations of the researchers. After all, this isn't the first time that scientists have fudged their research for political purposes - this has happened before and it has happened to all sides of any given issue. To think that there aren't a few scientists working for coal-industry funded anti-climate-change think tanks that do the same thing is naive. My point is that people in the climate change movement cannot lower themselves to the level of their opponents, because that's not how this debate will be won.

I don't think it's misrepresenting to say that people who claim that human activity is not affecting the climate are either dishonest or ignorant. To what degree it's affecting us and what we should do about it is a legit line of argument, but those that call climate change a "hoax" are being blatant hypocrites by chastizing these scientists for doing something they do on a more regular and more extreme basis. No argument here. But again - it's not as if the anti-climate change lobby (aka - fossil fuel industry and others) don't fund propaganda that does exactly the same thing, on a more regular basis, and on a much larger scale. Well it's obvious - no one trusts the scientists in question. But just as with any other professional field, the actions of several people don't invalidate the whole practice. We don't distrust doctors because some of them botch surgeries due to negligence or malice. I mean, I question why people are being harsher with climate change scientists than they are with bankers and stock brokers. Several scientists are enough to taint your views of the whole field? Okay - then how do you feel about the system-wide corruption in the global finance and insurance industries? Seems to me the level of weight people are putting on "climategate" has a lot to do with their political leanings.

Do you think that Israelis would be able to stomach committing blatant war crimes, that not even the most hawkish of Likud party members could explain away? If Israelis had to choose between abandoning the construction of a settlement and mowing over Palestinian men, women and children with bulldozers, they would turn back down the road. Because once you start doing things like that, and you live in a democratic state with free media, you can no longer convince yourself that you're not a monster.

Because their position is completely illogical - there is no factual basis to their claims about the Swiss Muslim community. Notice how in all the "yes" side's campaign information there is an utter lack of statistics on things like: the amount of women who wear burkas/niqabs/hijabs in Switzerland, how prevalent is Sharia Law, Wahabi money funding mosques, etc. - that's because the actual reality does not match up to their perception of reality: Swiss Muslims are very well integrated, law-abiding and peaceful. Also consider that so far no one has been able to connect the dots between the proposal and the goal. No one has been able to demonstrate how banning an architectural element common to religious buildings of a specific religion, will prevent radicalism within that religion. People just keep repeating the aims of the law without explaining how it works in the reality. And there are plenty of people in Switzerland who are highly against this ban, I'm sure they've never felt more embarrassed in all their life for their country.

Iconoclasts destroy images from their own cultural/religious background. It's not iconoclasm when you tear down other people's cultural or religious imagery, that's something else entirely.

It's incredibly disappointing to see that several scientists have stooped to the level of the coal & oil industry and other groups which are trying to manipulate the public into thinking that human activity is not affecting the climate. As we all know, the deniers have no ethical code to uphold - they can misrepresent, lie, manipulate, misquote, over-emphasize, down-play to their hearts content and no one will hold them accountable - because that's what propagandists do. Scientists however, simply don't do this, they're held to a higher standard. No one said it as easy fighting fair when your opponent is going for low-blows, but in the end, no one really likes a cheater. That said, unless you're being emotional and/or dishonest about this, there is no rational way you can say that the actions of several scientists are representative of the greater group of thousands of climate change scientists. They are most surely the exception. If we use this rule of "several exceptions make the rule" than I suppose we will have to rule, for example, that all family-values conservatives are really closet homosexuals - it just doesn't make any logical sense, which is exactly why no one but conspiracy theorists and anti-climate change zealots are holding this up as "the nail in the coffin" of climate change.

Certainly Palestinians aren't blamelss - after all, how on earth could the leadership think that violence was a better option against a democratic nation like Israel than non-violent civil disobedience. If Israelis had to choose between running over Palestinian civilians lying down, chained together blocking the road to a settlement construction site, and abandoning the settlement, they'd choose the later in a heartbeat. The violence is what allows the Israelis to (wrongly) feel like they are justified in continuing the occupation.

And how much of that violence and occurred within Switzerland? Maybe they should be thinking more of what was going on in their own country at the time of the cartoons - maybe then they'd realize just how peaceful and integrated Swiss Muslims are.

What's especially concerning is how many Swiss feminists joined in on the "yes" side - they thought that banning minarets would prevent women from being abused. I find the idea ridiculous - feminists in league with far-right nationalist parties that traditionally have been quite patriarchal. But of course, it's not as if culturally ignorant feminists haven't been paternalistic and demeaning towards women of colour and of religious minorities before, I'm sure it won't be the last time.

The thing is, I don't understand their reasoning - minarets have absolutely nothing to do with Sharia law or radical Islam. It's like saying a church steeple is simply a symbol of Imperialism because of what the catholic church did in the Spanish & Portuguese empires.

Why did they feel they needed to send a message? Swiss Muslims are one of the most well-integrated religious minorities in Europe, there are only 4 minarets out of 400 mosques, none of them taller than any of the churches in the same towns. Why does this law only apply to Muslims? Why are Sikhs and Hindus still allowed to build huge towers? Can you even find one instance where discriminating against a minority group and repealing their constitutional rights resulted in LESS isolation and MORE integration? An why did they feel they needed to violate the constitution in order to send this message? Are there some things that should just not be decided by popular vote? What if the Swiss decided that women's right to vote should be repealed, would you still back the popular vote then? Because Islam isn't a peaceful religion, it's a religion capable of both peace and violence, much like Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism. And for the record, so far all of the opposition has been vocal. You also forgot to mention that the Vatican condemned the minaret ban in very harsh words, now why would that be?

Too bad Swiss Muslims are among the most well-integrated in Europe. Which makes the minaret ban even more ridiculous, there are more than a few parents who are thinking: "what are our kids going to think? We do so much to fit in, and they still think we're the enemy." Talk about a self-fufiling prophecy on the part of the Swiss who voted yes.

I did read the article, it doesn't answer my question: how does banning an architectural element common in the religious buildings of a specific religion do anything to combat radicalism in that religion? I asked you because I figured since you posted the article, and you support the ban, you might know something about how this will affect change in society. Did I figure wrong?

How does banning an architectural element commonplace in all kinds of Islamic places of worship (be they liberal or conservative) help "stop radical Islam"? I don't get it, connect the dots for me.

I think we both didn't read each other's posts through to the end.

Which ones? The ones suggesting that prior to WWII Jewish experience in Muslim nations was great, and in Christian nations it was terrible? Yeah, those are ignorant opinions: they were both horrible, but if you wanted to do a comparison, it was probably slightly better to be in a Muslim nation because at least you had legal protection, even if it was part of an overall discriminatory set of laws. In Christian nations, you had nothing. Did you have any other questions?

Most of the energy used by a suburban household is waste - it's energy that you just don't use when you live in a well-planned urban area: from the natural gas you use in the winter to heat rooms that are over-sized or never used, to the energy used to fuel the 2.5 cars that drive long distances. This was never a secret, even in the 50's, people knew this required more energy - they just assumed that our supply of it was virtually limitless. But even when we realized it was finite, the market continued to fuel suburban growth. Why? Because the market is not rational, because the market is a human construct and we're not rational. The suburbs are a product of the market. That's why many suburban municipalities have adopted much stricter planning policies, because they've realized too late that commercial developers don't care about building communities and cities, they care about selling product. In the past they could have cared less if their product digs our society into a hole - they were only legally obligated to produce a profit for their investors. Could be true I haven't read that, from my understanding the sub-prime collapse decimated the construction industry and the states that had the largest housing booms were hit the worse: Florida, Arizona & California all had big construction industries, and they've been hit the hardest. We also didn't have any of the modern technologies we take for granted way back when we had 1 billion people - I mean, the industrial revolution was just beginning back then. Fact is, we can produce A LOT of the foods we eat locally, there is a lot of arable land in urban centres, and even more under-used arable land surrounding cities. We may not be able to produce all of it, but we can definitely do much, much better than we are now. We may have to eat less meat (because of how much energy and land it takes to make 1 pound of meat protein vs veg protein) but we over-eat meat to the point where it also harms our physical health, so that's not much of a leap. Contrary to what some folks think, you won't whither away and die if you don't have meat at every meal of the day. They'll adapt of course. But the question I'm asking (again) is how painful and how long will this adaptive process be? We've built our economy chiefly around oil for the last 60 years if not beyond that. It will take over a decade at least to deal with $200 a barrel oil if we wait until it hits that price before we do anything about it - in that timeframe a lot of people are going to get hurt by this new reality - and we shouldn't underestimate what prolonged hardship can do to a society's very fabric. Absolutely the government should be legislating those adaptions now - because the market will only begin to adapt when the problem smacks us in our face, and if we continue to increase our consumption of energy, those alternative sources will cost us a fortune. We didn't wait until the ozone layer burned away completely to do away with CFC's, and industry survived, we don't have to wait until oil costs $200 a barrel to make efforts to conserve it. I don't think I said I'd impose anything, I prefer a carrot and stick approach, but as to preserves specifically? I'm for more DIY education, and supporting co-ops that do this so that there is a base to expand on when the mainstream demand arises. Because I'm concerned about industry not doing anything until the problem of finding affordable winter produce is already here - and then coming a year or two too late to help the many folks who couldn't afford the essentials for a winter or two. I should have stated this earlier, but while the middle class may be able to dip into savings to afford things such as fresh winter produce for a while (unless it goes on too long), poor folks don't have that option - they're the ones who are ultimately going to suffer for a problem created mainly by people who are more wealthy than they are. They'd actually fare a lot better than traditional farms in a world of expensive oil. For example: the many hydro transmission lines that run through the old inner suburbs of Toronto represent a huge amount of unused land. They are literally next door to market and a large labour force. It would be cheaper in that reality to use less oil-based farming (ie - pesticides). The thing is though, these farms would be community initiatives and could be adapted - you could make some farms non-profit and/or for-profit, these would employ people from the community, meaning that someone who was desperate enough to steal food at least would have the option of earning a living (and generally, folks who are desperate enough to steal food are more than willing to work instead) Who said anything about a conservation fee being imposed at a whim? In my mind, you'd work out an ideal amount of cash and you'd phase it in over several years. And that rate would be dynamic and would adjust to changing situations (ie - Iran shuts down gulf oil exports and we hit a crisis - then you'd cut the rate altogether). All of that cash would go into a fund that would develop conservation & alternatives. Fusion was never "just around the corner" even if a major breakthrough happened today we wouldn't see a working plant for at least several decades, so false comparison. I disagree that you can't overcome the current limitations of batteries, but I actually think that the biggest leap in technology will come from next-gen photovoltaic solar panels that can grab even more energy. Actually better service means more passengers - if people know that they can have fast, reliable service, they're much more likely to take transit than their car. Nothing is a better billboard for transit use than sitting in your car in gridlock every day and seeing buses or street cars whizing by you while passengers relax and watch youtube on their free WiFi connection (as they do on York Region's Viva bus service). The "if you build it . . ." line absolutely applies to transit so long as transit investment goes hand-in-hand with solid urban planning.

What's your definition of indigenous? I'm going to assume that the "Jews and Muslims did not live in completely in harmony until the development of Israel" line was slightly hyperbolic, yes? And for the record, yes I'm aware of the atrocities and hardships faced by Jews in Muslim nations prior to the creation of Israel, but at the same time I'm aware that the situation was pretty much the same in Christian Europe as well.

While I'd love to lower overall consumption, I should be clear that I'm talking about lowering per-capita consumption, and I do believe it's possible for us to lower that factor by quite a bit. I think California's current unemployment rate has more to do with the overall problems experienced by the US economy, than on the state government's support of emerging technologies like alternative energy and new methods of conservation. Once upon a time we supplied our own food, but we paved over our farmland with suburbs that aren't economically viable in the long-term. I still think that we can grow much more of our own food than we currently do. I agree with most of this, however I think imported foods that are commonplace now will become luxuries for special occasions in the future. Avocados will become something for special occasions only, because they'll just be too expensive with oil going over $200 a barrel. Again, I'm not an ideologue, I know how much energy it takes to heat a greenhouse - there are only a few places where the soil would make it worth it and you have access to cheap energy sources (geothermal) to do it. But you're forgetting about preserves to make our homegrown food last through the winter: just like our grandmothers used to do - they might not taste as fresh, but you still get all the nutrients, and if you get creative, you can make good things out of them. This would give Canadian food manufacturers a boost, and would also help out independent producers, who right now cater to a niche well-off clientele. People will have to start buying more preserves out of necessity - because fresh food in the winter will become more expensive. I think it's quite possible - non-profit and co-op examples already exist, they sustain their operating costs by selling some of the produce, and volunteers get a certain amount free. Because you can literally drive the crop down the street to sell it, and there are no labour costs (volunteer), the overhead is very low. In Cuba for example, the Havana urban farms have the highest yields in the country. Theft would only be a minor problem, you'd secure the perimeters of the farms of course. Obviously there are differences, but I think in terms of how complex each system is, they're pretty much even - if we can manage one, we can manage the other. I don't think so, I think nukes sell themselves when oil is expensive and carbon emissions are rising - and again the only reason they rank lower on my list than yours is their capital costs. I don't think renewables are a dead end right now, but battery improvements will be a huge boost, and those are coming in the near future. Because transit that has its own right of way is faster, and therefore has more ridership, which can support more frequent service, and therefor passengers spend less time waiting for a transfer. You also don't run into the issue of vehicles getting bogged down in heavy traffic and "bunching" (ie - no buses come for 30 minutes and then five show up, back to back) Oh no way - we can support much more and already do in urban areas. The redevelopment plans in many of Toronto's suburbs that I mentioned before will be able to support bus routes that are comparable to urban areas. We built our way into this problem, and we're going to have to build our way out.

Of course there would have been, but peace would've come at the cost of Palestinian self-determination. The situation is obviously different, but I don't think you would argue that if the US had just accepted British hegemony, than they wouldn't have had to have fought a bloody revolutionary war, thus they should've accepted the status quo. Some things are worth struggling for, and for us human beings, self-determination appears to be one of them. By and large they were excluded, the Peel Commission was not concerned with addressing the grievances of indigenous Palestinians - it was concerned with settling the issue of European Jewish immigration to Palestine, and hopefully securing a European nation as a sort of colony in the Middle East by which to influence regional affairs. No wonder it was dismissed as a purely colonial venture by the Arab states. That's beside the point - they were being forced by an Imperial power (Britain) to give up their homeland so that a new nation could be founded by a bunch of European foreigners. Empathize for one moment (relax, even Sun Tzu said it's smart to empathize with your enemies to understand their motivations): an new Imperial power grabs control from an old Imperial power (Ottomans) and after a period of turning a blind eye to mass immigration to your homeland by people outside your ethnic group and not listening to your concerns about it, the Imperial power decides to cut you a "deal" - they'll set up a separate nation for those immigrants, on YOUR land, and let you keep the other half . . . Not exactly a generous deal from their perspective, is it? European Jews haven't been in the Levant for 1500-2000 years. They made up the vast majority of Zionist immigration prior to the founding of Israel and during it's early years. When you've been gone that long, and you've settled in other areas, intermarried with the local population, and adopted many of their cultural customs, you don't have any more legal rights to the land. There were other options, it's just those options didn't match up with Britain's immediate Imperial self-interests. I for one don't pick and choose on this issue - I don't recognize ancient land claims, period. If we did as a rule of thumb, the whole world, Europe included, would look a lot like Israel and Palestine do now. It's just a terrible idea. Yeah, a 2:1 ratio of immigrants to citizens is problematic and not sustainable, incidentally - this is the ratio that massive post WWII immigration to Palestine of European Jews represented - now you have an idea of why Palestinians felt under-siege in their own home. My point is this: that you expected Palestinians in the past to accept a situation that you, I, or anyone else never would have accepted.

Why? Why should Palestinians have consented to foreigners immigrating en masse to their homeland and setting up a state which excludes them? You'd never tolerate 60 million Arab Muslims immigrating and carving an Islamic state out of a huge chunk of Canada. Hell, you won't even tolerate any Muslims or non-white people immigrating to Canada.

Occupations have a peculiar habit of slowly transforming both the occupier and the occupied into terrible human beings. Given the history of such operations, it's pretty pathetic that there are people still willing to believe that Occupations aren't situations that the occupier should remove themselves from as quickly as possible, for their own benefit.

Lictor, As you already know, a situation where a crime occurs between two people who happen to be of two different groups (race, religion, etc) is NOT a hate crime. Thus, the case you cited is NOT a hate crime. It can only become a hate crime if it's determined THROUGH EVIDENCE (usually testimony from witnesses or friends/family) that a person's race/religion/etc. was the primary factor in the perp targeting the victim. You know this, but you went ahead and tried to pass off this case as a hate crime. This is yet another in a long line of instances that justify everyone's opinion of you as a dishonest hack.