WIP

We are not going to continue being a petro-economy one way or the other! The reason why oil companies are drilling in deep ocean waters and cooking tar sands for oil is because there is no more easy oil available. Peak oil was likely already passed two years ago, and the most optimistic estimates that point to 2020 or 2030 for the peak, have already factored in the hard-to-get oil, and assumed no large increases in consumption. Face it, we're going to have to give up on oil one way or the other. The difference is whether we start now on the alternatives, or keep doing what the oil companies want, and use our resources to develop those last drops of oil. The logic behind shifting the tax burden onto carbon is taken from a basic principle that you get less of what you tax, and more of what you subsidize. So, instead of subsidizing offshore drilling, governments should be taxing the production of carbon and subsidizing non-carbon producing energy sources.

It's not playing devil's advocate! It's a simple matter of either you allow religious freedom or you don't. Some Christian fundamentalists are up front about their hopes of imposing Christian values on the rest of society, while others deny it and pretend that resisting Christian domination is an attack on the rights of Christians.

It's too bad that trying to see the world from another perspective is a bad thing. I'm still waiting for someone to inform us of why building a mosque near the WTC is an unholy act. And that's only the case until conservatives have their way and separation of church and state becomes a distant memory. Some of us unreligious folk have noted that it is Christian fundamentalists who raise this point. Since proponents of Christian Nation ideology would take away religious freedom from all non-christians, I am guessing that they would prefer no mosques be allowed to be built here, rather than churches built in Saudi Arabia. In my neighbourhood there are three churches within two blocks of each other; why can't they all go to just one church? Here's why the proponents of the new mosque want to build the new one according to the link you mentioned: Two Muslim organizations have partnered to open the mosque and cultural center in lower Manhattan, saying the $100 million project will create a venue for mainstream Islam and a counterbalance to radicalism. It earned a key endorsement this week from influential community leaders. But the growing number of congregants at the only other nearby mosque, open only one day a week, created a need for an additional space for Muslim prayer in the neighborhood, said Daisy Khan, the executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and a board member of the Cordoba Initiative, the two organizations sponsoring the project. The post-opener only quoted from the outraged, and said nothing about the reasons why the advocates wanted to build a new mosque. Seems a lot of people want to be continually in a state of outrage, and only hearing one side of a story makes it easier to create a black and white world.

The real scandal in this closeted homosexual's case is that he was a paid expert hired by the Florida state government to speak on behalf of the ban on gay adoption and gay marriage, and pocketed 120,000 dollars. How much credibility do the anti-gay and gay conversion movements have when guys like George Reckers turn out to be their experts? 'Rentboy' Minister Got $120K Taxpayer Dollars From Fla. GOP Gov Candidate -- for Anti-Gay Testimony

Maybe you could explain this: Gulf Oil Spill: Eight-Inch Tar Balls Wash Up On Beach Most of the oil is trapped in underwater thermal currents and hasn't reached the surface yet. Eventually we're going to find out just how light and easy to manage this oil is!

I've heard that both the Islamists and the reform movements consider the Saudi government to be a corrupt despotic regime that's supported by the U.S. military. Also, I didn't know much of anything about Islam or the MiddleEast before 9/11. From what I've gathered, most of the Muslim World was moving in the direction of secularization until Europe moved in after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and established colonies. The colonial governments didn't last long, but they, along with the American who were invited in by the Saudis, set up Western-friendly governments that made sure that their oil companies got control of developing the oil fields. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic movements has to be credited somewhat to a reaction against Western economic domination and the installation of puppet dictators. If there is a problem with Islamic theology, as Daniel Pipes insists -- that they have to go through some sort of reformation process similar to that which happened after the breakup of the Catholic Church, then it would still make more sense to have less of a footprint in the MiddleEast and less dependence on getting oil from the region. I've read some progressive and liberal Muslims, many of whom are trying to promote an open process of Ijtihaad, frequently say it's virtually impossible to talk about reform in the current climate while war goes on in Iraq and things get worse in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. This is why I take the fingerpointing at Muslims by fundamentalist Christians with a grain of salt. All of the talk by conservatives in the U.S. of America being a Christian nation and such, is a clear sign that the boundaries between religion and politics have become blurred. As one U.S. general said after the success of the initial invasion: "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." There have been many Christian fundamentalist extremists who have used 9/11 to advance the notion that Christianity is imperiled and Christians need to become militant and fight for control of government (seems to be Glenn Beck's theme on most nights). The Christian theocracy movements are a more imminent threat here to democracy than worrying about Islamic government. A few years ago, when I used to listen more to conservative radio, I can only recall one interviewer sticking Robert Spencer with the question of what do you suggest we do in the West about Islam, if it's really an unreformable movement bent on world domination. Not only didn't Spencer provide a straight answer, he stumbled around like he never even prepared for or thought about the question. And that's where this 'clash of civilizations' thinking falls apart. If they do believe in the Apocalypse or unending war, they refuse to say it out loud. From my perspective, there is no single Christianity or Islam to begin with. These are complex belief systems, not singular entities, and within each there are competing sects, and schools of thought with their own interpretations.

That would be fine if it wasn't for the demolition project that will be necessary before they build that temple.

There's at least more than one temple movement such as this one, that want to build the Third Temple. I don't know if they work loosely together or would get into a big fight if the day came when they actually had a chance to build it. And about eight years ago, I came across this fascinating story about some Christian Zionistranchers that are trying to breed a red heifer -- an acceptable unblemished red heifer considered worthy as the first sacrificial offering by the presiding rabbi, would be the catalyst for an attempt to blow up or tear down the mosque and get that third temple built....and WWIII would right around the corner, I suppose.

Noted. Nobody would object to a memorial at ground zero, but some of the thinking here is close to turning the place into some sort of holy shrine that will be defiled if an unclean group of people get too close to it.

I'm still risking your money...not mine. There's still this problem of management setting up compensation systems that reward traders for taking great risks while losing little or nothing when their trades go bad and lose investor's money. If worse comes to worse, they cash out with full compensation and go to work down the street for another firm. So is Madoff that much worse than the high rollers on Wall Street? He cost his investors billions, but the Wall Street firms that caused trillions of dollars in loses, millions of unemployeed, and economies colapsing around the world, used their political leverage to get a bailout from the government. The SEC can't control Wall Street! Their staff is generally young, inexperienced, and in many cases have left their resumes with major Wall St. firms. Anyone looking for a future with Goldman is not going to go ferreting around for damaging information. It's a similar pattern as we're finding out about now in the Gulf -- where the Minerals Management Service, which was supposed to be regulating offshore drilling rubberstamped everything that BP and its subsidiaries were doing. How about if they lose their compensation and bonuses when they pile up losses for investors! And that doesn't deal with newly created markets like derivatives. Are credit default swaps insurance policies on investments? That's how they've been sold. But AIG was allowed to create this market on the side and not have it classified as insurance contracts -- which are a regulated product. Just one more example of those with the money, making the rules for their own benefit. Goldman Sachs again! Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank, is today at the centre of the row over the Greek government's finances, amid recriminations over complex financial deals that allowed the eurozone nation to skirt its debt limits. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-sachs-the-greek-connection-1899527.html Did Fannie and Freddie create the Subprime mortgage market? How much of the blame goes to predatory lending contracts created by the banks and home loan companies? And for the fact that mortgage-backed securities allow the risk of default to be dumped on to someone else. Many of the purchasers of these securities had them insured with AIG's CDS contracts. When they lost money and showed up at the window to demand payment from AIG, that's when the rest of us discovered that there were entire financial markets that were completely unknown to the public. We still don't know what the value of credit default swaps and these other derivatives are, and they are still an iceberg floating below the surface, waiting to bring down the whole international banking system down...so blaming the financial meltdown on HUD and two largely government controlled lenders is just a desperate gambit by the people who've created this mess, to try to shift the blame elsewhere. Actually, he's a Republican. Government needs to be strengthened, not weakened. Specifically, politicians and government bureaucrats need to be out of reach of business lobbyists looking for political influence. The SEC and the Minerals Management Service are two good examples of government regulators that have largely declined to enforce the rules against corporations and allowed them to set their own standards. Can you explain to me why these market bubbles have become worse in the last 30 years, since corporate taxes and the top income tax rates were reduced, and industries have been deregulated?

It's not being a junkie for oil, it's being unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifices to get off oil. The carbon tax proposed by Stephan Dion could have been revenue-neutral or pretty damn close to it, and by taxing energy sources that pollute the environment, it would have provided an incentive to move quicker to alternative energy sources, and away from coal and oil. And although there is little willingness to make sacrifices for longterm benefit, a lot of the resistance against taxing carbon is because of the oil companies that are paying phony scientists and conservative think tanks to present their propaganda to the public, in an effort to keep tax subsidies going to coal, oil and gas, rather than to alternative energy. And your junkies shooting their drug dealer analogy doesn't fit because we're not talking about destroying the company's assets, we're talking about revoking their charter. Governments grant these corporate charters and they can be revoked, although it has rarely occurred in the last hundred years. The corporations business can continue on under new management.

Take a look atwhat's going on in the Gulf now, especially the fact that independent analysts believe that the leak estimates are grossly underestimated, and most of the oil hasn't reached the surface yet. Most of the oil is likely caught in large underwater plumes, and no one knows which shorelines they could be headed for! Wherever it goes, the fallout from this disaster is going to be catastrophic for ocean life down there....so environmental genocide is a justifiable description of the mess they have created from their greed, negligence and corruption.

They do have a death penalty in the U.S., which is skewed to execute low income defendents whether guilty or not, while wealthy murderers never face the death penalty. As in the O.J. and Jon Benet Ramsey cases, the defendent with bags of money can afford a legal team that will turn the local police dept. upside down and put the spotlight on incompetence of the investigators. In the realm of artificial persons, the U.S. used to have an automatic death penalty years ago if a corporation couldn't prove that it was acting for the public good. The anti-trust rules that broke up monopolies at the turn of the century was about the last time corporate rights were checked. Ever since then, their legal status has been growing. It's worth noting that the original restrictive laws regarding corporations came out of the American Revolution, and the general revulsion towards the East India Company -- which I think was the first multinational corporation. The Americans did not want to let artificial citizens become dominant as they were in the European colonial empires.

Many of these women don't want to be EXPECTANT MOTHERS to begin with. The Harper policy that you support is like restricting aid to helping victims of car accidents rather than doing something to reduce the number of traffic accidents in the first place. Which is 4% too high and another reason why the woman should decide this matter, not you or any other moralist who doesn't have skin in the game.

Trying to understand people on the opposite side of the divide is much more difficult. But when it comes to understanding the 9/11 victims, they haven't all come away with the same ideas on how we should deal with terrorists and terrorism. If conservatives are so concerned about 9/11 victims, why did several conservative spokesmen like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, make personal attacks to the small group of 9/11 widows that appeared at the Congressional hearings demanding release of information regarding possible cover-up of negligence? The right wing only has sympathy for victims who share their beliefs, just as widows and parents of sons lost in Vietnam were scorned by conservatives if they wanted troops pulled out of Vietnam. Up till recent years Canadian troops kept a fairly low profile in Afghanistan, but when Harper decided that we need to be going on search and destroy missions against the Taleban, our soldiers are going to be targeted as well; and likewise it is much more likely now that Canada is an option for more terrorist attacks than it would have been previously. We are taking sides with a corrupt political regime that employs soldiers who are ethnically different and in many cases, don't even speak the same language as the Pashtuns in these so called Taleban strongholds. Who are the locals going to support: the people who are from nearby tribes and speak the same dialect? Or the foreign infidels and the government troops of Turkmen and Uzbeks? It's amazing how history keeps repeating itself! This story was already played in Vietnam, and no reforms or new strategies worked there either. Specifically the us vs. them approach that loads all Muslims into the same boat and declares we have an inevitable "Clash Of Civilizations." I can't see anything but more of the same coming from that approach, and what I find most alarming, is the militancy that is growing in right wing Christianity south of the border. You don't want to address that topic, but the increase in Christian nationalist themes is going to lead to more groups like the Hutaree Militia. And then it becomes a matter of Christian extremists vs. Muslim extremists. I've been reluctant to mention this, but part of my discomfort with the hysteria about a mosque being built near Ground Zero is that ground zero is being treated as a holy site. You and the others who are outraged by a possible mosque being placed nearby may deny it, but this reaction doesn't make sense unless Ground Zero is considered to be holy ground. This reminds me of the Hindus who destroyed a mosque they claimed was where the Hindu God Rama ascended to heaven. Or the Palestinian outrage over Jewish zealots that want to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount where the Al Aqsa Mosque sits now. They are very adamant that even if nothing is done to the mosque, it is still an abomination. This outrage over a mosque near ground zero is being treated in a similar manner. Secular thinkers are at pains to understand what all of the commotion is about, and I don't think it makes any sense unless ground zero is treated like a holy relic by some people.

I don't know if the problem is collective ADHD or news channels that are more concerned with entertaining an audience than informing the public, but something is wrong with this 'story of the hour' approach that gives 30 sec. sound bites for most stories and can't give in depth coverage of more than one issue at any given time. No doubt this is the reason why politicians release damaging information on Friday afternoons...by Monday, the story is out of the news cycle. The most important under-reported story of this disaster are the chemical dispersants that are being used to dissolve oil -- these chemicals could have toxic longterm effects on the environment themselves, and yet the manufacturer refuses to release information about their ingredients for patent reasons.

Damn straight! Most men (except for social conservatives) are still smart enough to recognize that spending nine months in pregnancy and going through the risks and rigors of giving birth should give pregnant women the right to say whether another new life is brought into this world. Otherwise there would be a legitimate argument that men who do the impregnating should have equal say. But that's not nature's design. Most pregnant women have babies, while some will continue to have abortions whether it is legal or not. The American example that has been playing out over the last 30 years is to make abortion a class issue -- where middle and upper class women still have access to abortion, even if they claim to be pro life; while lower class women have lost access to nearby clinics and funding, so they have to bring another child into the world, even if they are drug-addicted or do not have the financial resources to look after the child. The last thing we need here is conservatives up here deciding that we should be following this American model.

How about the evidence provided by Harper and his cabinet ministers themselves! They say they want to fund maternal healthcare in Africa, which in some countries such as Ethiopia have a situation where most women have another child every year. A break from reproduction doesn't come until their health is degraded to the level where they are no longer able to bear children, or they die in childbirth and complications from pregnancy. Now, would this maternal care crisis and high mortality rates from pregnancy be as big a problem if steps were taken to lower pregnancy and birth rates? The example here in the West from all of the white nationalists who frequently bemoan the fact that women here don't have enough babies -- is that if you give women the choice over when and/or if they will have a child, they have a lot fewer children! It doesn't take mass sterilization campaigns or one child policies to slow population growth and its secondary effects in the Third World -- all it takes is giving women there the options that are available to women in the West (that conservatives are trying to take away). And so what if abortions are illegal in most African countries! This is where our governments, who are never shy about using aid to get favourable economic and political deals, can use that aid to lean on backward patriarchs who are looking to the West for help, to do something to improve the quality of life in their countries.

The worst aspect to this policy is that it takes the pressure off the majority of Third World nations which do not allow abortion (or birth control in many cases) to change their policies and allow women to have control over the number of children they are going to bring in to the world. Africa has a young population that is just entering adulthood, and will cause a surge in population growth right at a time when climate change is causing disastrous droughts, water shortages and soil erosion, that are destroying farmland and will leave growing populations with less to eat. If the Harper Government was really concerned about life, rather than playing to their fundamentalists, they would do anything and everything to stop population growth.

I'm wondering every time I read about another laser-guided drone missile going astray in Afghanistan or Waziristan, how many Rosemary's over there are feeling like taking revenge on America. The problem with the way the Neocons are presenting this Muslim problem is that the motivations for terrorist attacks and suicide bombings are not based on religion. Religion can provide the sanctification for carrying out terrorist attacks, but the incentive for terrorist attacks is revenge. Declaring that 9 -11 is caused by reading the Quran is a claim made by people who don't want to factor in real-world issues, like resentment of the American Empire: military bases in the Middle East, along with carrier fleets controlling the shipping channels, supporting Western-friendly puppet dictators...are a few things to factor in to the discussion. Another point that needs to be made about this fingerpointing at Muslims, is that the rhetoric from Christian nationalists in the U.S. is getting more aggressive and creating Christian extremist militias planning terrorist attacks of their own. There is a flimsy superficial historical narrative advanced by Islam-watching groups like Robert Spencer's Jihadwatch, which goes something like Christianity used to do bad things a few centuries ago, but we had a reformation, and the Muslim World hasn't. The first problem is that Christianity and Islam are not singular entities; there are thousands of different sects within Christendom and competing sects and schools of thought within Islam. Spencer states that Christianity is now compatible with the modern, multicultural secular world, but Islam can never be. There are liberal and progressive movements within Islam, as well as cultural Muslims, especially in the West, who identify as Muslim and follow the customs and traditions, but say they don't believe all the supernatural claims...some even being atheist or agnostic. Spencer says these westernized unorthodox Muslims can't be trusted or relied on because the fundamentalists speak with scriptural authority. Well, the same thing can be said about Christianity! What it boils down to is that people will shape and shift their religions when necessary, regardless of dogma. The uncompromising approach towards moderates, along with the continued military ventures in the Muslim World do not help any groups attempting reform. All we'll get is endless war, which is unfortunately what believers in the "Clash of Civilizations" expect anyway. Anyone who's getting tired of wars on terror dragging on endlessly should start wondering if it would be better to pull the troops out and make a serious effort to end dependence on MidEast oil which makes military bases and puppet dictators necessary.

No word yet on whether the "Top Hat," the smaller containment box will work to control the leak; BP engineers are supposed to try it some time today. Right now, even though at least 5000 barrels a day of oil are gushing from the damaged wellhead, news coverage has dwindled because the oil isn't finding its way to major coastal areas yet. Some oceanologists are warning that most of the oil hasn't reached the surface yet because the well is one mile under the surface, and the water is much colder down there than at the surface. Here's another reason why they better get this thing fixed sooner than later: Hurricane could worsen huge US oil spill MIAMI (AFP) – The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could grow even more disastrous if the looming hurricane season churns up towering black waves and blasts beaches and crowded cities with oil-soaked gusts, experts warned. With just three weeks before the Atlantic hurricane season lurches into action, odds are more than 40 percent that a big storm could cross the giant spill gushing from beneath a ruptured well on the seabed. An April 20 blast sank the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform, killing 11 workers and leaving its uncontrolled well to gush millions of gallons of oil into the gulf waters.

Let's call it the Corporate Death Penalty, since big business keeps pushing to expand the definition of corporate personhood. So, if a corporation commits environmental genocide, as will be the case in the coming months and years down in the Gulf, then give BP the death penalty and sell off its assets or create a number of smaller oil companies barring any present BP executives from having a role. And, use BP's billions in monetary holdings to pay settlements for damages from the oil spill before shareholders get their take.

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." unattributed Native American Indian quote...sage advice whoever said it.

At least Chretien was smart enough to stay away from going on the attack against the Taleban. Right now, the few Westerners who understand what's going on there say that the Americans can't distinguish between Afghanis trying to keep outsiders out of their valleys, and the remnants of Mullah Omar's army -- which is about the same bloody mess of not knowing who to shoot at in Vietnam.

How is it possible to know what sort of Muslims will go to a mosque near the WTC? But, isn't banning them from the area a blanket condemnation and an attack on freedom of speech? By the time the War On Terror is over, there will be no such thing as personal rights and freedoms. Now ERic Holder says the requirement to read a suspect the Miranda Rights should be removed if someone is accused of terrorism: Holder: Miranda may need changes for terrorists I think you're getting pretty close to the point where you may as well take your Constitution and Bill Of Rights, and throw them in the fireplace -- since both Democratic and Republican lawmakers agree that there should be exceptions to every constitutional rights because of the War On Terror and the War On Drugs. As Benjamin Franklin said:"Those who would sacrifice Freedom for Security deserve neither."