Wild Bill

You're missing the point, Shady. If glaciers are actually advancing they should be stopped and FORCED to retreat! This would make them positive contributors to the Global Warming problem!

Then you should have no trouble citing many instances of successful treatment! I've never heard of even ONE instance! Have you?

I shouldn't even bother but here goes! You built the straw man, not me! First off, if there were 1200 REPORTED cases it's a certainty there were far more. Governments want those types of figures to be reported as low as possible. However, that's not the main issue. Every country has problems. However, certain cultures seem to have values, or lack of them, that conflicts with our own. The question is not if you have a problem but what you try to do about it. If Pakistan shows little or no inclination to address such cases then other cultures and countries have a perfect right to place a value judgement on them. If a country like Pakistan admitted they have such a problem AND they showed concrete and realistic attempts to address it then there would be no need to brand them 'pariah'. Judging by their tepid, lukewarm attempts to deal with Islamic terrorists, along with these instances of infanticide, they show no signs of admitting such problems. Obviously, they don't think these ARE problems! Treating them as a pariah nation would put substantial pressure on them to stop acting in such a manner. When and if they do begin to act in a more civilized manner BY OUR VALUES then we can remove the pariah designation! The fact that not all their population may support such medieval attitudes is a red herring. We can only deal with them as a country and it is up to their government to address such concerns. Refusing to deal with them would put pressure on their government to change. In the meantime, we would sit on our side of the wall and they on theirs. If they come over the wall then we would simply throw them back, without any need to be gentle about it. Where is it written that we should deal with those we don't or can't respect? What gives a country the RIGHT to have everyone else deal with them? At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, how far would Hitler have gotten if old Joe Kennedy and his friends had refused to sell him machinery and arms?

Yeah AW, when I first read his post I was in shock! I guess he's never had a strong relationship with a woman. An attitude like that shows either incredible ignorance or incredible callousness! It went right to the core of this old hippy! I've still got a lot of close female friends. Back then a lot of them were what we called "ball buddies". Today the term is "friends, with benefits". I never made such distinctions. To me they are simply friends, and you don't treat your friends' feelings so cavalierly.

I agree, only I would take it a step further. There's an old word from that part of the world. 'Pariah'. That's where you completely ostracize someone. You don't talk to them, you don't interact with them - you act like you don't even see them! If a country was declared a pariah country then we don't trade with them. We don't use them for cheap labour. We don't use their people to man call centres for our customer service needs. We don't buy their vegetables. We don't give them our jobs. If their people are starving that's their problem, not ours. Human rights should actually COUNT for something, not be something we ignore when it's expedient! Sometimes we don't have as much choice as we'd like, as with many fundamentalist Islamic countries that supply us with oil. However, we are slowly putting our efforts into new technologies. There will come a day when we don't need to buy from some of those countries. When that day comes, they can go to hell! The souls of those babies will rest easier...

Man, you have just lost every woman on the planet! You sound like a virgin academic! First off, rape almost invariably includes a lot of pain. Second, to a woman the sense of violation can psychologically scar her for life! The fact that you don't understand WHY is irrelevant! That's how it affects most women! It's a simple fact that can't be denied! I predict that you are due for some pretty intense flame responses from our female members.

Careful, Michael! When you talk like this you are really saying to the "3.7 million' "You are a minority and therefore will be an ignored part of Canada forever!" This on top of the fact that when attempts are made to add seats to the West, due to increased population, the West sees that they don't get as many seats as they should because it might offend Quebec back East! I don't care about demographics and different political cultures. In any organization you can't expect to have a segment of your membership doomed to forever have to pay dues and be permanently blocked from having any real power with input into how the organization is run! It is a recipe for a sense of permanent estrangement - even a sense of being 'used'. If you let your regions feel that they are mere minorities not worthy of participating in policy then you should not be surprised if you have problems with regional alienation. Elitism is a poor way to foster unity. The ironic thing is that in Canada we often also ignore the views of the majority! Justice issues are a perfect example. Anyhow, I've belonged to several service clubs over the years and have seen first hand what happens to those run by a 'clique', or 'cabal of old guys'. It can take some years or even decades but eventually you see that the membership has slowly drifted away, until there's not many left BUT those old guys! Countries are different, of course. You can't give up citizenship like you can a membership. Still, if too many people start feeling like they WANT to, you get problems! If the problems are never addressed, you start hearing about secession movements, like Quebec or Alberta breaking away. A lot of people don't know that when Reform was first born there was a strong chance it could have been an Albertan Separatist Party. The support level was not trivial! A LOT of citizens liked the idea! Manning successfully sold the idea that a party from the West had a shot at change at the federal level. If he hadn't, our history might have been very different. I know you didn't mean your comment in quite that way, Michael. Still, one should be careful! There are still people who would like to take their "minority" province or region out of Canada. Their numbers can be surprisingly high. Is it wise to encourage them?

Ok, you seized an opportunity to get an anti-abortion shot in. Fair game, I suppose. Still, what does that have to do with the price of eggs in China? Let's assume just for the sake of argument that your view on abortion in our country is 100% true and valid. Now, does that make the situation in Pakistan perfectly acceptable?

You're moving the goalposts, GWiz. I cited some examples. You totally blew them off as poor science fiction fantasy. Now you make it out to be my fault for not writing you a book to explain my examples in the first place? I give up! When you said you were the farthest thing from a techie, I now believe it! The last time I ran up against this sort of attitude was from an English prof who thought that even though he might not have ever done something himself or had any direct experience he was still qualified to comment because after all, he had taught about it from a book! God save us from academics!

Well, I just zipped over to a webpage for Egypt and tourism. The shots of people on the beaches show bikinis, not burkhas. I'm a ham radio operator and I've had many chats with Egyptian hams via shortwave. Egypt has had no problem with using the InterNet or watching satellite tv. Things seem pretty free there. I've met young civil engineering students from Egypt and chatted with them. They seemed as well aware of the world as any from McMaster U here in Hamilton. It may not be all sex, drugs and rock and roll over there but Egypt is hardly Afghanistan, or even Iran. It would seem they have been exposed to far more than you suggest. Not the same as us, perhaps. Still, they are a far cry from some oppressed Islamic fundamentalist peoples. I just don't believe that a strict religious government is possible in that society.

It may not come to that but the danger is indeed obvious. Mubarak certainly looks like he deserves ousting. The question is , what kind of government will succeed him? Myself, I'm optimistic. Egypt has been a fairly modern, progressive state for some decades now. Most of the protesters seem to be younger people who are quite plugged in to the freedoms of western societies and want the same for themselves. The religious radical groups don't seem to be driving this protest, although they certainly would love to seize control! We may see more bloodshed if the fundamentalists try, since they really don't seem to have the popular support. Egypt's protesters are young and well-educated people, not ignorant farmers like the Taliban once ruled. If the Brotherhood of Muslims or some group like them tries to pull an "Iran" and replace Mubarak with a religious theocracy they would likely face even stronger protests! In the long run I don't think this will threaten Egypt's relationship with Israel, the USA or the rest of the world at all. It will just mean a better country for Egyptians. Of course, that sort of example for an Arab country is the LAST thing an Iranian ayatollah would want!

This stuff is so old I'm surprised to find people who've never heard of it but here goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment "Project Thor is an idea for a weapons system that launches kinetic projectiles from Earth orbit to damage targets on the ground. Jerry Pournelle originated the concept while working in operations research at Boeing in the 1950s before becoming a science-fiction writer.[1][2] The most described system is "an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance". The weapon can be down-scaled, an orbiting "crowbar" rather than a pole.[citation needed] The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force (USAF) report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10, and strike 25-foot accuracy.[3][4][5] The time between deorbiting and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range.[citation needed] There is no requirement to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons. The system is not prohibited by either the Outer Space Treaty nor the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.[4][6] The idea is that the weapon would inflict damage because it moves at orbital velocities, at least 9 kilometers per second. Smaller weapons can deliver measured amounts of energy as small as a 225 kg conventional bomb.[citation needed] Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[5] These designs are envisioned as the ultimate bunker busters.[4][7] The highly elongated shape and high density are to enhance sectional density and therefore minimize kinetic energy loss due to air friction and maximize penetration of hard or buried targets. The larger device is expected to be quite good at penetrating deeply buried bunkers and other command and control targets. The smaller "crowbar" size might be employed for anti-armor, anti-aircraft, anti-satellite and possibly anti-personnel use.[citation needed] The weapon would be very hard to defend against. It has a very high closing velocity and a small radar cross-section. Launch is difficult to detect. Any infra-red launch signature occurs in orbit, at no fixed position. The infra-red launch signature also has a small magnitude compared to a ballistic missile launch. One drawback of the system is that the weapon's sensors would almost certainly be blind during atmospheric reentry due to the plasma sheath that would develop ahead of it, so a mobile target could be difficult to hit if it performed any unexpected maneuvering.[citation needed] The system would also have to cope with atmospheric heating from re-entry, which could melt the weapon.[8] While the larger version might be individually launched, the smaller versions would be launched from "pods" or "carriers" that contained several missiles.[citation needed] The phrase "Rods from God" is also used to describe the same concept.[9] A USAF report called them "hypervelocity rod bundles".[10]"

Those people are simply barbarians. It's high time the rest of the world started treating them as such.

You're comparing a piece of titanium in the shape of a crowbar, falling 100 miles through the atmosphere POINT FIRST to the space shuttle. Isn't that like equating a tin needle to a granite brick? You don't need a nuke big enough to fry an entire state! A mini-nuke will do nicely. We've had tactical nukes small enough to be used in artillery stationed along the border between the Koreas for decades now. So I'm to believe your rebuttal NOT because you make good points with physics or even evidence OF WHAT ALREADY HAS BEEN INVENTED but rather because "you're smart and your son is not only smarter but rich"! Well, rules of debate demand that you answer my question, not ignore it with a Peewee Herman style "I know you are but what am I?" response. However, I'll answer. I see an old guy who has read up on science and technology for a LONG time, considering I was reading before I went to school. I would NEVER claim to know it ALL but I do know better than to try to deny something that has been invented and tested just because my son hadn't explained it to me yet!

Molly, there's a much simpler solution that Manning and Reform figured out years ago! All you need is backbencher MPs willing to defy the party whip, in large numbers! It's the party solidarity thing that makes Canadian politics so dictatorial and undemocratic. All power really resides in the Prime Minister's Office. The PM and his cabinet thrash out a policy and then the caucus is expected to act like a bunch of trained seals and just rubber-stamp it. Nobody cares if the policy is unpopular in a certain region. MPs from that region are expected to just "lie back and think of England", voting as they are told for the good of the party. Why do the backbenchers always go along with this? Well, part of it is just Canadian tradition but most of it is MONEY! Most MPs desperately need party money to run a campaign and get elected or re-elected. There is also the worry that the party leader could refuse to sign your nomination papers next election, effectively forcing you out of the party. If backbenchers would concentrate on local fundraising effectively enough they wouldn't need the party money. At that point, if enough of them decided to band together they could easily challenge the party whip! After all, there are FAR more backbenchers than there are party leaders! If the party leadership wanted to retain control they would be forced to listen to their backbenchers, or lose power. If they had been foolish enough to make a bill a non-confidence motion this would bring down their own government. Odds are that after an election most Canadians would have shown far more respect for the backbenchers for choosing their constituents over their party brass and re-elected most of the rebels and few if any of the leaders! If Reform or at least its principles had have survived the merging of the two parties the iron fist of total party solidarity would have been severely weakened. We seem to be unique among British parliamentary type systems to practice solidarity on every damn thing, from F-35s to who brings the doughnuts, or even what kind! In America or even Britain representatives vote against the party line all the time, practicising solidarity only on "Bills of Substance" where it's considered vitally important to have it passed. Oh well, we fought the good fight, but we lost! The CPC runs exactly like the old Progressive Conservatives. The elitists won!

I'm a realist too, GWiz! NONE of my examples are scientifically impossible! They were ALL thought out by guys who were not just sci-fi writers but actual physicists! Writing was just a sideline. Some of them actually worked for NASA. They were practical ideas using technology we've had for nearly 30 years. EMPs in particular have already been tested and proven. When you have a nuclear explosion you generate an Electromagnetic Pulse that fries pretty well all solid-state electronics. Set your missile to go off about a mile or two above a typical city and virtually anything with a transistor, integrated circuit or computer chip is promptly toast. That's just cold hard fact, man. Just because you haven't gotten out much to hear about it doesn't mean it's not true! All those unmanned aircraft, with fried electronic systems, jetting crazily across the sky in all directions until they crash into the ground, God knows where and hitting God knows what! The military now uses special "hardened" solid state devices that are immune to the effect but that won't help everything in commercial or personal use. The actual nuclear explosion also plays hell with radio waves. It's a crap shoot if your drones could even hear the remote pilot's control signals anyway! I'm a tech by trade, GWiz! If I had a nickel for every blue sky idea someone comes up with that just won't work in the real world I'd be rich as hell. Everything depends on the details and it's always easy to come up with an idea when you know nothing about those details. However, SOMEBODY better look after those details or things just don't work! Not only do you sound like a horse and buggy man who doesn't think cars will catch on, you sound like one who lives in a small town and doesn't realize people have been driving them for 20 years! Meanwhile, you're touting off a "personal jet pack" idea with your unmanned drones replacing manned combat aircraft while cheerfully ignoring all those important details!

Somehow, I don't think it would happen. You see, the "powers that be" LIKE the status quo! Consider that first of all, our governments have put such onerous "green" restrictions on refineries that no private company wants anything to do with them, because of the increased cost and red tape. Second, having refinery capacity as a bottleneck tends to hold prices up even when the price of crude drops. Also, the slightest excuse of "some pothole in the parking lot" forming in a refinery can always be used as an excuse to hike prices at the pumps. While you may be quite correct that micro-refineries would be great for Canada's people it would mean possible surpluses and price wars among the relatively few oil companies that play in our market. Why should they bother? They don't have to spend a dime of capital, the price stays high and they never have any surplus inventory! The same trick was pulled a few years ago in California with the electrical producers. No one built any new generating capacity, avoiding all the increased costs for new "green" rules. When power got short, the price went sky high! Companies made fortunes by investing nothing! This is what can happen when you don't have open, free markets. As soon as governments start putting in artificial factors it's a lead pipe cinch that some "suits" will find a way to exploit things.

Esq, you seem to be ignoring the fact that Canada has such limited refining capacity of its own that any attempt to pressure the US would automatically hike prices of gasoline sky high here in Canada! Are you truly confident that any Canadian ruling party would cheerfully commit electoral suicide?

No conservative vote? Hey, I felt the same as you but times change and parties do as well. Dief has been dead and in the ground for a long time now! So has Trudeau, for that matter. Parties change over the years. They have no fixed ideology or values. They all just keep jockeying for position in the mythical centre of the road. If you would still vote Liberal after AdScam because of a bad decision half a century ago I think you are cutting off your proverbial nose... Operating a wrench is only one kind of task when you have all the time in the world to torque it. Flying a supersonic plane in combat is quite another! As far as I know, CF-18s will never be stealth capable. However, they can do some things that F-35s can't, like land on a carrier. 'Course, Canada has no carriers... Still, I suspect that we are evolving to a point where a modern military is going to need ALL these types of machines! Financial bureaucrats don't like to accept this but invariably any tool that is described as a "universal fits all" does everything all right, only everything is lame-ass compared to a specific tool! Esq had a very good point. What happens to your swarms of unmanned drones when they run smack into a nuclear EMP pulse? For that matter, even with hardened electronics that can take this, how well will radio operate through nuclear explosions? Seems to me your going to have unmanned drones flying with no control all over the place! As Esq said, we may have to wait until we have developed quantum communications that would be immune to interference or hijacking. That field is progressing rapidly but we are not likely to have a working solution by next weekend. I'm still wondering what ever happened to the suggestions of scifi writers like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who dreamed up ideas way back in the 80's for new weaponry. Like dropping "crowbars" from orbit having just enough electronics to waggle some ailerons for steering and lock onto a tank for a target. The kinetic energy of a 5kg "crowbar" dropped from orbit would obliterate any tank it hit! A swarm of them could demolish an entire battlefield. Cheap, too! Who needs bombs and bomber airplanes to take out manufacturing or military sites? Just drop a bucket of gravel from that same Earth orbit. Not at all hard to aim - we've been doing that sort of simple ballistics since the days of cannon, maybe even catapults! Want to take out an enemy's observation satellites? Fire a shotgun shell in a retrograde orbit. By the time it has circled around the back way you have a fair size cloud of pellets that will shred any satellite to pieces. Is anyone thinking what would happen if China built a manned base on the moon, along with a mass driver to hurl rocks back at its enemies? How could we defend against it? Form a committee to decide if its a federal or a provincial matter? Those writers came up with a whole pile of such ideas! All quite workable and relatively cheap. They all depended on having hardware in space, to take advantage of the gravity well. It seems very strange that no country has developed that capability, or at least is not talking about it!

Wow! You got me all nostalgic there for a second, wyly! Your dissing of the "wild rose(wacko) party" took me back to the days when Reform was getting started. You sound exactly like many of their critics at the time, with ad hominem attacks. They may or may not prove to be wackos. I've often thought the NDP to be wackos over the years. That's really just personal opinion. All that counts is how well they may do at the ballot box. Something tells me they may inherit the mantle of the old Reform Party, even if not really deserved. There are a lot of people feeling like they lost the only choice they ever really approved. If the Wild Rose is perceived as being even remotely similar they can pick up a HUGE number of protest voters! Despite the opinion of many, there are a lot of Canadians who would want to vote for a party because they LIKED the choice and not because it "smelled the least"! People at heart DO want to vote because they view it as a positive act, instead of always feeling like they've discharged a distasteful duty.

Bombers? Maybe, as long as there weren't too many of them. I was thinking more of ICBMs. I'm no expert but I think it possible that enough Arrows, stationed in the NWT, with advanced anti-missile missiles could have knocked ICBMs down. Or at least done a better job than making a radioactive barrage of Bomarc missile explosions, a la that old arcade game, "Missile Command". Today we have the software and hardware of Patriot systems but they were just a gleam in an engineer's eye back then. Whatever, Morris! Are you trying to pick apart my model or my point?

This is a very old premise. We can go all the way back to Diefenbacker, when they cancelled the ARROW, a manned interceptor, in favour of Bomarck missiles that supposedly could 100% knock down any incoming Soviet nukes. Turned out not to be true. We were left with no airplane in the Arrow's class at all and no interceptor missiles either. Many times during the Space Program someone has suggested eliminating manned missions in favour of robots. Admittedly, it IS cheaper! You don't need to include an expensive life support system. However, this idea has never worked as well as it was thought either. So far no one has come up with a robot as intelligent and quick-thinking as a man. Exploration, like combat, has a LOT of unforeseen variables that require instant decisions! Until Commander Data is invented, this idea doesn't fly either. We HAVE drastically cut back on manned space flight in favour of machines but anyone who says we've progressed just as fast and as far hasn't actually looked at the progress! Machines take only baby steps. Slow baby steps at that. Now we're looking at 'teleo-operations', where we will fly unmanned drones. It does eliminate the risk to a pilot's life but are we anywhere near the level of techology where an unmanned fighter craft could win in combat with a manned plane like the F-35? The difference between flying an unmanned drone over Afghanistan and engaging in combat with a manned F-35 is like the difference between an F-18 and a Cessna. A remote-controlled, TOY Cessna! WHEN and IF our remote control technology gets to that level is the time to examine eliminating manned planes! That could easily be 40-50 years. What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Sit on our asses and tell each other that we won't need them? Demand that the world treat Canada as an international player for peace keeping when we don't have sufficient or new enough equipment to do the job? Past glories don't cut it, in combat. I would agree that unmanned planes may someday happen. I just don't think they are ready TODAY! What's more, given Canada's track record with these sorts of decisions, if we abandon the F-35 in favour of a program to develop unmmanned equivalents it's a sure bet that 10 years from now we will have neither the F-35 OR the drones! It's the Canadian way!

Unfortunately, fiscal conservatives don't seem to be electable in Canada. We tried with the Reform Party but the opposition was "frothing at the mouth" rabid to block them from power. Understandable, considering Canadian politics has always been "brokerage" politics, where parties contest by bribing various segments of the electorate with their own tax money! A fiscally conservative part would put an end to that. No more getting a dozen or so canoe museums built with federal money in your home riding! Harper knows all too well that the key to victory is to keep the "mushy middle" on side and give the old Reform type voter no other choice but the CPC. What are they going to do, vote Liberal? They have no choice but to hold their nose and vote for him. If there ever was an alternative, like if the Wild Rose decided to run federally, Harper would lose a good chunk of his support over night! However, we'd be back in the days of a fractured conservative movement. It would be Liberals forever! I don't know what the solution is, anymore. Manning's Reform Party movement seems to have been a total waste of time. We seem to have some very strong demographics among the voters but each is not strong enough to propel a party into power by themselves and there isn't enough common ground between them. Manning may have already realized this. He founded a Centre for Conservative Studies, which is working to make many of his ideas more common and accepted among mainstream Canadians. This will take generations but if it's effective it may be the only chance for fiscal conservatism.

Big time, Keeps! TM should tell it to Kristen French or Leslie Mahafy. Better yet, he should tell it to her parents, face to face!

Oh, I dunno, BM! I've held many of the same kind of jobs as you in my life and see no reason to demean them. And although I don't believe it of myself on several occasions you have claimed that I'm a conservative! Some guys will just shoot anything down, left or right. You don't refute any of my premises by using them to take a shot at conservatives.