WIP

The bombs India and Pakistan possess are many times more powerful than Hiroshima and those early A-Bomb tests. After the test-ban treaty was signed, all further testing had to be done underground. The US and Russia each have thousands of nuclear warheads, and the rhetoric and apparent NATO strategy of encircling Russia, leads many to be believe that we are more at risk of full scale nuclear war today than we were at the height of the Cold War....when saner, more rational leaders prevailed....who were actual military veterans I might add. During the Cold War, it was not considered reasonable to contemplate engaging, let alone surviving a fullscale nuclear war....it's an experiment that can only be performed once, and it seems like we have the kinds of psychopaths in positions of leadership today who might try to roll the dice on this one!

I'm not on facebook, so I guess I'm missing out on stuff I'm not interested in! That said, if I followed your way of thinking of dismissing sources because of some of their content, I would erase every single MSM news source available. For example, the NY Times and the Guardian are essential at a time when foreign news bureaus have shut down, but they are often sources of pure propaganda...for example, the Times provided the legitimacy for Bush's invasion of Iraq at a time when they knew the WMD evidence was fraudulent and kept the evidence hidden from the public until months after the War began. I hear the same crap about some of my favourite news feeds: RT, Al Jazeera and PressTV. But, I don't go to RT for stories on Putin or life in Russia (if I want crap about Putin, I can turn to the MSM). But, on stories like the instigated civil war in Ukraine, while we received a solid wall of propaganda from the conservative and liberal news sources over here, I could find lots of missing pieces in puzzle from Russian media and bloggers....same with Obama's failed regime change in Syria and Libya...these are stories that rightwing US media fail to criticize the president they claim to despise so much. Now, when it comes to ISIL or ISIS whatever....I don't find any satisfying explanations for how they are able to function in the midst of so much supposedly hostile forces trying to stop them. So far, the only enemies of ISIS that are clearly fighting against them are Kurds, Iraq's Shia militias, Hezbollah, Syrian forces and now Russia. Turkey has used the cover of a war on ISIS to bomb Kurdish villages in eastern Syria, and the US claims to be dropping bombs...which don't seem to hit any useful targets for some reason! And where is Israel in all this? It's been realized in recent years that there is some sort of de facto alliance between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan with Israel...though it's something they won't come out and state publicly. And they all claim to be enemies of ISIS...but not willing to do much about it. The Saudis have been able to turn Yemen into a failed state....and the next wave of the refugee crisis, but they don't seem to be a whole lot concerned about which armies all the "volunteers" going to Syria are signed up with.

Where I work, that's how a lot of clueless boobs found themselves subject to sexual harassment investigations. It was a joke.....I meant it as a compliment etc.. Some of the verbal and especially physical harassment could not be disguised or excused, but even the ones claiming persecution by the forces of political correctness should have realized that some of the subjects of the compliments were a little more sensitive and suspicious than others, but even if harassment is unintended or unintentional, it's never wise to speak first before thinking.

I didn't say I like it, but the Catholic Church functions as both a church and a state, and that's how they are able to blur these boundaries. They have a pseudo-nation in the Vatican, that provides the legitimacy to deal with nations at the state-to-state level, and write up treaties called "Concordats" with various nations around the world with large or Catholic majorities within their populations. No other church or religion enjoys this kind of leverage....and you righties weren't complaining about it before during the two rightwing popes who collaborated with the CIA and assorted banana republic dictators in Latin America who tortured and murdered...including murdering rebellious clerics like archbishop Romero in El Salvador. When Romero's name gets offered up for canonization, I'll take notice....until then, I'm watching a politician who represents a powershift from old Europe to the Third World within the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Nor is it likely that you are aware Jesus's apostles told their followers to bring forth ALL of their goods and possessions to be SHARED equally among the brethren: Then, in ACTS Ch. 5, we learn the price for any job-creators who decided to hold back even a part of their wealth to be divided:KJV Modern rightwing christian spindoctors...especially the evangelical stars with the mansions and private airplanes, like to focus on the lying aspect of the story as being the reason Ananias and Sapphira were divinely executed, and ignore the whole point that the first Christian community according to its own texts, was extremely socialistic, and the reason why so many later fundamentalists sects...including Amish and Mennonite communities were socialist. What's especially laughable, is the modern American rightwing thanksgiving myth of the Plymouth Rock Colony being endangered by their inefficient communism, but flourishing after discovering God-given capitalist market principles. Much of the reason why this pope is receiving abuse from the Limbaughs and Townhall bloggers is because he is returning to the pre-capitalist Christian teachings that started in America 100 years ago and spread throughout the world. Prior to the rise of rightwing freemarket christianity, wealth and the owners of wealth were not godly men...until they gave a substantial portion of that wealth to the Church! It used to be: blessed are the poor/ then it became blessed are the rich...and this new pope is not so much a leftist radical than a real traditionalist who's reaching back prior to the capitalist reinvention of Christian dogma.

What I am certain of is that he should be considered a politician! He seems to have an ability (similar to Obama and Bill Clinton) of winning popular support without making much/if any policy changes within his organization. He is well aware of the fact that the kind of rightwing Catholic Church represented by US bishops and cardinals is on its way to extinction, so he's trying to appeal to younger, more liberal voters....I mean Catholics...before they walk out and leave the Church for good.

So, tax the car companies for the traffic accidents and congestion, but the carbon and related pollution are clearly costs that are externalized by the petro industries onto the global commons....in other words, we all get left paying for the damaging effects while they pocket all the profits! And, besides taxes, we now have grounds to launch a massive lawsuit against at least one major petroleum company for burying their own research on projected harms that would be caused by global warming....it's remarkably similar to the cigarette manufacturers who buried their research on cigarettes&cancer: Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings

Change the rules back the way they were before PET turned the PMO into a dictatorship! There was a time long ago, when cabinet ministers thought for themselves and even contradicted the Prime Minister.

If nuclear is the holy grail, how about the boosters of nuclear finance it themselves...including their insurance liability costs...then we'll all be happy!

Knowledge can be a dangerous thing! People may start thinking independently when they have knowledge, instead of copying and pasting the same conservative talkingpoints and phony issues on every message board available.

Maybe you can explain then, how ISIS is able to set up a rogue state that earns hard currency from oil exports that go through Turkey? I'm going on the presumption that who ISIS attacks/and doesn't attack, speaks volumes about the likelihood of clandestine support. If the US and all of the neighbouring states were really fighting ISIS, would they be able to govern a large portion of Iraq and Syria from their capital - Raqqa? With all of the aerial surveillance and drones available, someone's letting it happen.

Thanks for proving that those who benefit most from white male privilege are the least likely to realize it, and just assume they deserve all of their advantages. On the other hand, some of us who don't know what it's like to be black...to be an immigrant...to be a woman....to be gay, are not going to assume that we know what sort of impact it may/or may not have, and therefore already be certain of whether so called microaggressions are an issue worthy of consideration and dealing with.

And before there were rich Indians and rich Chinese, there were rich Latinos sending their kids to expensive private schools in Canada and the United States....reason being that a rich Columbian or Mexican etc. had...and likely still has to worry that his kids may be kidnapped on their way to school. Up till now, the wealthy in Canada have been able to move about freely and unencumbered with bodyguards....worth noting that gated communities are at least 40 years old in the US.. But, as the gap grows more and more extreme, the rich will have to spend more and more money walling themselves off from the public and protecting their children.

I don't know whether it's possible to change the warped winner-take-all mentality that saturates our culture today (judging by all of the howling and gnashing at the Pope's criticism of "unfettered capitalism" probably not likely) but when some animals around the watering hole are armed with nuclear warheads, it's easy to envision how the end result of desperate competition for water ( India and Pakistan) or some of the other nuclear confrontations will destroy life and exterminate the human race. The stakes are so high, that allowing things to take their course should not be considered a sane option for the future.

Read your cite first, before getting dazzled by graphs and charts contained therein! First law of statistics: garbage in/garbage out: I mentioned previously a few reasons why I consider this claim of globalization reducing poverty to be total crap: no accounting for inflation...especially on basic food prices...the most important determinant of quality of life in poor urban zones; or the fact that third world economies were mostly rural and functioning through barter and trade between farmers, vendors and craftspeople at local markets. There wasn't much of an economy to monetize before the enclosure tactic found its way to the third world and started forcing people off of farms and out of rural villages to fill cities and serve as desperate sweatshop labour for all of the proposed new low-paying industries made possible by eliminating tariffs and quotas in the target markets. Are people forced off the land and into cities to work long gruelling hours for 10 or 15c/hour better off than rural poor growing their own food and trading for luxuries? It's a hard case to try to make to begin with, aside from having no quick financial indicator to measure their quality of life....which is not really a concern of the World Bank or international capitalism anyway! I could add a point I made when sifting through hard-to-get data on income and quality of life in Bangladesh, around the time of the factory fires and that factory collapse that killed 1000: the $1.25 number or any other number is not weighed to discount the effects of increasing inequality....as everywhere it is tried, capitalism distributes most of the gains to the owners of capital, and with no income redistribution, a small minority of millionaires and billionaires will pull up the national average even if most of the population are actually below the designated poverty line.

I would add that this "warrior nation" mythos has been a series of lies from the very start. The original 13 colonies joined together and began a century-long effort to ethnically cleanse the continent of its indigenous inhabitants, and seize land from the colonial empire to the south - Spain. And on this new land, most of the wealth generated in the first 8 decades or so came by way of importing African slaves. But, today's warrior nation- America is using its combined military forces to enforce and retain control of its commercial and banking empire that dominates through globalization of trade and finance.

Oh! And what is Canada going to do about it? Are we going to join Israel and bomb Iran...and if so, with what? NOOOO, because we're part of The Empire, and so is Israel! Israel has a lot more clout in Washington than Canada does, hence trying to disrupt the political process there, but ultimately, Israel has to fall in line! Any questions?

Neil Macdonal has a useful editorial up at CBC News today, pointing out some simple facts like how the narratives have morphed and changed as the weeks go by in this latest round of The War on Terror. Now, whether Pentagon stooge - Harper will admit it or not, there is either an intentional or accidental alliance with the Assad Government in Syria in the fight against ISIS. I doubt that the recent shifts in strategy have much to do with the financial and military costs of fighting in Iraq and Syria or even this bullshit scare tactic that terrorists are coming over and going to plant the black flag over Parliament Hill. It's because the poorly thought out and ineptly managed strategy of regime change has led to refugee crises that can't be contained in nearby refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, and are now knocking on Europe's doors! And the flood of refugees looks like it's going to get worse next year, so they better cool things down, stop feeding ISIS and stop providing the fuel that actually creates and motivates terrorism!

It depends what sort of 'education' you're talking about. The problem with your side (and I mean everyone from equivocators to outright deniers) is you seem to think that we as a species are somehow separate from the world we live in and not subject to the natural forces of nature...even at a time when those forces are rearing up and biting many people in the ass already!

Pope visits.....and right wing heads explode all across America. Unfortunately, President Obama is already packaging the Pope's speeches on climate and other issues as support for his agenda. Keep in mind that his agenda so far has been to give an impassioned speech about the dangers to the human race of allowing carbon to increase......less than a week after approving Exxon's offshore drilling venture in the Arctic Ocean! Walk The Talk!

My core principle is that reality may not be convenient, but it still has to be dealt with. When reality is ignored, problems like those associated with environment and resource depletion don't go away....they actually tend to get worse than if they were dealt with early on in a concerted effort. In the long term we could end up with a future looking like the past....the era before modern civilization, when everything was made by hand out of renewable resources. Reminds me of a series of "World Made By Hand" dystopian novels written by a pessimistic investment analyst - James Howard Kuntsler over the past 15 years. His best case scenario for the future is everything grinding down in a chaotic unorganized mess, and the survivors rebuilding/but forgetting the world that once was,and baffled by the decaying artifacts of modern civilization.....it's as good a projection of a likely deep future as any! I didn't say everything has to be centrally planned and organized to ensure fairness and equal distribution of resources. That wasn't even part of Karl Marx's plans when he wrote the Communist Manifesto. He foresaw the workers in a business or industry taking ownership and deciding collectively on future plans. What and how much was produced would have to be assessed according to need, but the actual operation of the business would look more like the cooperative corporate models of the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, than they would the Soviet industries run by hiearchies of communist party officials. A no-growth or steady state economy doesn't have to be socialistic....though it's still a fierce debate whether any market economies can function well without steady increases in production. The concept of some Rothbard followers of "Full Reserve" banking would remove the main cause of growth for the sake of growth in modern capitalist economiies. Rothbard opposed "Fractional Reserve" banking which causes a steady and constant increase in both debt levels and money supplies as the years progress. This system we have can only function as long as the new money and increased debt can be absorbed by growing economies. If they cannot, the system will crash or fall apart as investors start questioning whether they will get the returns on investment they are expecting.....sort of like we had a preview of in 08. But, can full reserve actually function without cheating by bankers (that's a primary reason why fractional reserve was adopted to begin with) or will there be any capacity to fund major capital investments in such an economy? I don't know, but the kind of economies we have today did not always exist. Prior to about 200 years ago, there wasn't much economic growth of any kind. Now, it's something that's expected by the vast majority of liberals through conservatives, and there will be a gradual slowdown or there will be a real crash, and a lot of people aren't going to get what they want or what they expected!

Since this thread has no connection anymore with the Leap Manifesto, nor with inference that it is connected with the NDP...as claimed in the OP taking propaganda straight from CTV/Global, Globe&Mail headlines; I want to refresh and go back to that idiotic and pointless claim and show just how far the NDP is from really dealing with environment issues: Naomi Klein has a message for Tom Mulcair: Keep the oilsands in the ground You see! Everyone wants to wear green......even Stephen Harper. But, none of the big three party leaders demonstrate any willingness or ability to educate the public on environment issues and crises, and they will sign on to everything that's politically popular....even turning Northern Alberta into something that looks like Mordor! The difference between the three on environment is how closely they want to be seen next to oil executives, not real differences in environmental policy!

The big stumbling block for solar and wind has been the problem of continuous power....which is expected to be 24/7 in the west. Alternative energy is really taking off in third world countries where power supplies have always been precarious and intermittent. I haven't read on the subject of late: but I've heard the claim that the main reason why a new series of large, coal-fired generating stations have been put on hold in India recently, is not the smog or other environmental problems as much as potential investors are becoming concerned that increasing numbers of lower class Indians buying solar cells and setting up cheap solar cookers, will keep chipping away at the profit potential of large scale generating stations. In much of Africa, people want to buy solar cookers and solar-powered lamps that are cheaper over the long term and safer than kerosene lamps and charcoal cookers. They will never be on the grid in rural regions of the Continent, so they are making the leap past conventional technology to alternatives, in much the same way that they have rapidly adopted cellphones and will never go through the stage of setting up landlines. When it comes to nuclear, I get the feeling that there is so much money still out there to lobby for building nuclear power, that the claims of 3rd and 4th generation nuclear plants solving all of our energy problems, are just overhyped BS! Conventional nuclear is extremely costly and takes a long time to build...and they have high carbon footprints when the huge quantity of concrete needed for containment structures is factored in. I figure that if nuclear was really as wonderful as its advocates project, they wouldn't need governments to pay for the costs of building them and underwriting the insurance costs in case of disaster. If nuclear is the only option, I think it means there are no options left.

The US was trying to create a different form of empire after the conquest of the west began wrapping up after the Civil War. American rhetoric had long railed against the British Empire and other old empires of Europe, so they started creating pseudo-independent nations run by proxy dictators that would be given free reign to pillage their nations as long as they maintained order and followed US commercial and foreign policy objectives. So, the rest of the world has long noticed the absurdity of the nation claiming to be the beacon of democracy and human rights in the world, is the nation that overthrows democracies to install military dictators whenever the need arises! And when they try to turn the tables to send money and guns to revolutionaries, they still get it wrong when they back drug-smugglers in Nicaragua...and most of the cocaine finds its way to American cities. Or in the Islamic terrorism context, it was the Reagan Administration that got the bright idea of supporting Bin Laden and other Mujaheddin jihadis and mercenaries invading Afghanistan to wage war against a Soviet-backed government. So, the formerly peaceful and tolerant Afghan countryside...where a generation of backpackers and hippies wandered through on their way to Kashmir and into India...is a place where gunmen set up roadblocks and demand payments before allowing anyone to get past. There's no way to consider terrorism or the Islamic extremism without considering the blowback from supporting these groups, and allowing US ally - Saudi Arabia to fund the education of Muslims around the world with the ideology that forms the basis of Al Qaeda and ISIS and other terrorist groups that are treated today like something that came at us like some kind of bolt out of the blue...that we couldn't foresee and had nothing to do with creating! I mentioned previously that there are reports now that Putin didn't want to spend capital defending Assad and was looking for some sort of deal that would have obviously included securing a few basic Russian interests in the region (nothing that the US doesn't also demand from such deals). Instead, they decided to roll the dice on another regime change attempt and have created a disaster that could destabilize Europe....or at least change the face of Europe as liberal democracies will likely be replaced by outright fascist parties in many European states because of the refugee crisis. That's the problem with having so many chickenhawks in positions of power, who love the idea of using military force as a first option, but have no personal appreciation for the results of war.

Not that most of us aren't already aware of some of the history, but England was no different than the other settler-colonial empires of Europe in considering themselves innately superior to any darker, inferior races they might come across in their travels and plant their flag in their lands. Follow the logic back to its origins, and we come to The Church, which whether Catholic or Protestant, had long dispatched any cosmopolitan notions of brotherhood of man and all people being equal under God etc.. Ruling classes always find ways to make their religions say what they want them to say, so every settler colonial empire declares some bullshit "chosen people" claim that God has granted them ownership of the tracts of land they just happen to covet. The core problem is the outgrowth of tribalism known in modern times as nationalism and patriotism, that was identified as the root cause of suffering and evil in the world at least as far back as 2000 years ago, and longer, if we consider some other religious traditions that were noticing the problem and trying to figure out ways to get their people beyond this primitive way of thinking about people and the world we live in.