WIP

I noticed a recent example yesterday, when a Daily Beast writer penned a surprisingly sympathetic article on Cindy Sheehan -- who is still fighting the good fight, and doesn't care whether the supporters of the wars are Republicans or Democrats. This is what really bothers me about two party systems, especially since it is the direction that we are heading towards as well. Cindy Sheehan only became a celebrity because Democrats, and their media allies used her and the Code Pink cause as a tool against the Bush Administration. Once they got their man in the Whitehouse, it's amazing how the antiwar movement was so successfully kept out of the media (which is another reason why I am suspicious of the do-gooder billionaires mentioned in another thread - Soros has made sure that Moveon.org doesn't talk about the wars and military budgets since Obama was elected). When both parties in a two party system are carrying out similar agendas, it is almost effectively a dictatorship that prevents alternative voices from getting through!

Not enough is used by plants...as we can see by the fact that CO2 levels are rising at an increasing rate and closing in on 400 ppm. Show me the sources! Paleoclimate is difficult to study as it is over short time frames. If there was a spike in temperatures 5000 years ago, it may have just been a local event...like that Medieval Warming period that climate change deniers like to go on about; or, since we're talking about the world after the last ice age, the rapid decline of ice, may have temporarily led to a rapidly warming period, as the albedo of the Earth's surface dropped due to the loss of reflective ice....who knows...but it had little or nothing to do with co2 levels. Naomi Klein wrote a comprehensive piece on the issue that is causing anger and resentment in undeveloped nations, and one that is the most ignored issue in the west: Climate Debt before the Copenhagen Summit...which was supposed to focus on this issue, and did nothing about it! You think the people in most of the Third World have benefited from the modern industrialization and global capitalism of the last two centuries....let's set aside some of the Pacific islands that will be flooded out in the coming decades, the real crisis will start when land-based ice sheets start sliding into the oceans in the West Antarctic. The sea level rise will flood out a third of Bangladesh, and leave most of the rest of the overcrowded, dirt-poor nation unfit for agriculture. Incidentally, India is responding by building massive walls and fences along their border, to prevent a mass influx of climate refugees. But shunning the high price of climate change carries a cost of its own. U.S. military and intelligence agencies now consider global warming a leading threat to national security. As sea levels rise and droughts spread, competition for food and water will only increase in many of the world's poorest nations. These regions will become "breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords," according to a 2007 study for the Center for Naval Analyses led by Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander. To keep out millions of climate refugees fleeing hunger and conflict, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 predicted that the U.S. and other rich nations would likely decide to "build defensive fortresses around their countries." I'd like to see General Zinni, or writers who have addressed the political implications of climate-induced instability, like Gwynn Dyer - "Climate Wars" go a little further into those what-ifs, and tell us what our prospects are here in the safe northern and western nations if one of those desperate, dying nations threatens the use of nuclear weapons as leverage. Allowing climate change to cascade unchecked could mean death to us all!

Many psychologists such as George Lakoff and Robert Altemeyer, who've ventured in to studying the followers of political movements, point out that there is a basic divide in politics that comes from how receptive an individual is to authoritarian thinking. The people who prefer to be told what to believe, are more likely to settle in comfortably in fundamentalist religions, and conservative politics. In our youth, we are at our most adventurous and boldest state in our lives; so it's no surprise that fundamentalist churches fret over losing the teenagers, just as university students are the mostly likely to join radical political movements. Later on in life, we start getting more careful and cautious, so if we have a tendency towards authoritarianism, we may go back to that church, or something similar later on when we have children of our own, and move towards the conventional, conservative politics of our fathers. So, that may explain the general trends. In his book "The Authoritarians," Altemeyer points out that fear...such as the fear and paranoia after 9/11, may cause many who would have been tolerant and liberal to turn towards authoritarian solutions....thank you George W Bush! But, the liberals who turned to W after 9/11 got buyer's remorse after seeing how their nation got bogged down in expensive foreign wars that W lied his way in to. While the authoritarian conservatives sucked up each and every flimsy excuse for foreign intervention without question...and that basic tension caused by different psychological makeup explains about 90% of what goes on in the world of politics.

Do you read the Toronto Sun, or any of the other Sun newspapers? I am already aware that newspapers have dumbed down in the need to communicate to an increasingly functionally illiterate audience, but the Sun is by far the dumbest of them all...say nothing of their ideological bent. For example, the mostly male readers of the Sun pick it up to see what used to be the page 3 girl...which they moved to the back in the interests of political correctness...and then it's on to the sports section. The news articles are tabloid style - short and sensationalistic. So, I would agree that they are picking the lowest fruit off the tree in their search for a target audience. Maybe their mostly uninformed audience is also easier to brainwash with conservative propaganda as an added bonus! I don't see this working with what I've seen of their TV station -- that has got to be the most boring crap I've ever seen on television! They better start featuring lots of chicks in bikinis or they're gone in no time!

Who said that here in this forum? I can't help notice that you overlooked the most obvious example of misuse of the term: someone who calls a few hecklers in an empty auditorium "leftist fascists." Eugenics is brought up in the Hitler - Nazi context, but if eugenics is part of the definition of fascism, then pre-WWII United States would be a fascist state, since the U.S. engaged in the widest practice of eugenics on human populations, even outstripping Nazi Germany. Now, we're getting to the source! Fascism is a totalitarian system that utilizes the existing power structures: business, military and religious leadership of the society. The exact meanings of terms like: fascist, conservative, liberal, socialist, are not set in stone, but are going to vary, depending on the society and the conditions of the time. Part of the confusion over where fascism stands on the political spectrum is because the creator of Fascism: Mussolini, claimed to be creating something he called "a third way." He did not want his totalitarian movement to be defined on the political spectrum. The difference between the fascism of his time, and the ones we have now in many corporate-dominated third world countries...and where we are headed towards also...is that our modern system of multinational corporations that can freely move their resources from one country to another - rewarding nations that do their bidding, while punishing ones who do not, or refuse - is that our modern fascisms are ones where political leaders are dependent on the corporations, rather than the owners of corporations depending on political or military strongmen for protection.

I think the real story is that most of the corporate class is so full of hubris since the fall of communism, that they have no fear or respect for the majority of working people who produce and purchase their products. The invocation of Godwin's Law in this thread provides us a chance to re-examine the history of the 20th century, and look back at how much more pragmatic and moderate the wealthy were when they feared communism and confiscation of their wealth as existential threats. Nowadays, in the U.S., they send their minions out in the media to tag a slightly watered down version of corporate capitalism - President Obama, as a radical socialist! This game is all about trying to change definitions to shift the goal lines of the playing field, so that every politician who even whispers about raising corporate and high end tax rates, and increasing environmental regulations is branded as a radical leftist. These idiots who spend their time 24/7 in the rightwing propaganda world need an introduction to real socialism!

They got what they wanted from their alliance with the Nazis: guaranteed monopolies for their industries, no unions or strikes to worry about, and protection from the state. They certainly considered it the better choice than what happened behind the Soviet Union, where they had their properties and businesses confiscated by the state! In 1920's and 30's Europe, that was where the left/right divide stood; calling the fascists in Germany, Italy and Spain "anti-capitalist" today is an absurd ignorance of historical context, created by people who are trying to blind us towards the corporate-controlled fascism we are headed towards. Read your history! Stalin took over private enterprise, not Hitler!

That's not anti-private enterprize. The only reason he railed against capitalism is because he believed that the Jews controlled the banking and industry of Germany. The Nazis had no problems with German industrialists like the Krupps: German Industry and the Third Reich: Fifty Years of Forgetting and Remembering By S. Jonathan Wiesen The great majority of German businessmen behaved in a decidedly unheroic manner during the Nazi era. Most of them, especially leaders of larger companies, not only refrained from risking their lives to save Jews, but actually profited from the use of forced and slave labor, the "Aryanization" of Jewish property, and the plundering of companies in Nazi-occupied Europe. http://www.adl.org/Braun/dim_13_2_forgetting.asp

Past emissions do mean something, since they've added to the present levels that are higher than anything we've had to deal with in human history: Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report And the entire world has not benefited from the high use of fossil fuels over the last two centuries. The concept of climate debt is based on the sad fact that the areas of the world which are the most undeveloped...usually in the tropics, are also the areas being most adversely affected by the changes we are making to the climate. The negative external costs of using oil and coal have largely been dumped next door on those who have not benefited from their use!

No, you can call that thuggery or mob rule, or whatever you want, but fascism goes far beyond intolerance of dissent. Nevertheless, all of the brutal rightwing FASCISTS, starting from Hitler and Mussolini (the man who created the term) and their followers and acolytes such as Pinochet, Stroessner, Duvalier, and the many banana republic dictators, also suppressed freedom of speech.

I'll tell you what! The human contribution to CO2 levels that are now over 393 ppm, have been steadily growing since the Industrial Revolution. That means we have to look at the total contributions made, and not just who produced the most last year! Not that that has anything to do with anything we've been talking about, but the fact that western multinational corporations have set up shop in China after searching for the cheapest labour and the cheapest locations for making stuff - does not qualify as "stealing." Do you have something to back up your statement that China isn't building windmills for their domestic needs? This article from the NY Times says that wind energy will produce 8% of their total electricity needs by the end of this decade, and is part of a national plan to reduce dependence on coal: TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html After seeing the rapid increase in air pollution in recent years...especially the need to shut down all of the factories in central China during the 2008 Olympics, do you think they are too stupid to realize that the rapid development of coal and oil wasn't sending their country towards an environmental disaster?

I'm not a liberal, but it seems that liberals are usually sensible enough to take the moderate approach to capitalism.

I make over 70,000 a year, and I would prefer living in a society like we used to have, that had less inequality, than the dystopia that we are heading into thanks to all of you rightwing libertarians.

The biggest problem for voting reform is that ruling parties will only make a half-assed effort to carry it out even if it's a campaign promise. Our last ONtario election could serve as Exhibit A, since the McGuinty Government put MMP on the ballot as a referendum question, but made no effort to support it themselves, and only put out one or two flyers explaining MMP to the public. I heard so many stupid comments about the proportionally allotted mpp's being unaccountable, and increasing the cost of the Provincial Parliament...even though the total number of MPP's would have still been less than the old House before Harris cut the number of seats to match the federal riding boundaries, that I knew it was a lost cause. Parliamentary reform is going to have to start from the ground up, before anything can be enacted in law. Hopefully that day will come while we still have something that resembles a democracy!

You call 20 people sitting in an auditorium a mob? Nevermind that, get your terminology straight. You rightwing fantatics continually try to conflate fascism and communism, as if they are the same thing. Well, leftist totalitarian movements are not fascists, no more than nazis can be communists. Fascism is built on the unholy alliance of wealthy business and landowners and the military. There is no such thing as a leftist fascist whatever point your stupid video was supposed to be about!

That might answer part of the question; but if the rich we are talking about are the billionaires, like George Soros, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet - there are alterior motives to their beneficence. Soros has bestowed a lot of money on the Democratic Party in the U.S. and created the most important liberal think tank - Center For American Progress; but he uses his purchased influence to have a hand on the wheel, so that the Democrats fit the moderate vision he has of what would create electable candidates. Bill Gates has a relatively more modest profile in politics, and uses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as his tool to leave a stamp on the world through the promotion of what he calls "philanthrocapitalism," through supporting micro-loans programs, green business initiatives etc. that make up a significant amount of the annual Foundation grants. Warren Buffet is closely tied with the Foundation through his 10 billion dollar grant. Warren Buffet has also made the news with his open condemnation of the trend to reducing investment and high income tax rates -- noting recently, that his secretary had to pay a higher rate of tax than he does. I'm not saying that what these three billionaires are doing is a bad thing...for the most part, they're trying to do good work. The point is that they certainly see personal and financial rewards from their charitable efforts, and they may be just slightly more rational than the libertarian billionaires, who want more money regardless of the consequences! These three may be among the few super-rich who have enough sense to realize that the gutting of the middle class, while the richest 1% double and triple their wealth, may eventually have negative repercussions on them, just like some of the kings and nobles of old, who ended up with mobs wielding clubs and pitchforks at their gates.

It's already been asked, but again where do you get the statement that nuclear is zero emissions from? Uranium mining is not zero emission; neither is the production of tons of concrete for the containment buildings....nevermind that we have that other nagging problem of having a slowly unfolding disaster that will drag on for decades after the ones who have caused the mess have all died off.

How about if we include legacy costs? China has only been a major CO2 producer for a few years now, while the U.S. and England have been major contributors since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Besides, China is moving rapidly to the top of development and production of windmills and solar panel technology. They are going to radically reduce the size of their carbon footprint, not because they are forced to meet targets, but because they don't take orders from oil company executives and coal producers!

I voted for the Green Party! Since I live in a safe NDP riding, the results are a foregone conclusion. 40% of eligible voters did not bother casting a ballot. I guess we can take that as evidence that there are at least as many eligible voters who have totally lost faith in our electoral system as there are for fools and zealots who voted for a Conservative government!

But, based on your previous argument, it's not "stealing" if the taxes are used to buy jet fighters or build prisons! As for your complaints about progressive taxation, the fact is that Canada is following along the exact same path now that the U.S. has been on since REaganomics, and the results have been the same: an increase in income stratification with greater gaps in income. All of the whiners against the concept of progressive taxation seem to miss the point that it is about the only tool in our society to keep us from becoming a banana republic with a mass of poor people and all the wealth controlled by a tiny minority. Judging from the negative effects on people and society of inequality, I'll go with whatever works to promote greater equality: The Equality Trust: The evidence in detail

And like most bonehead conservatives, you don't believe that taxes should be used in efforts to avoid war or find cheaper and better longterm solutions than building prisons. If the majority favour a social safety net, the minority who don't, are SOL and can just suck it up! And the majority didn't elect Harper either! He only got 40% of the 60% of voters who cast ballots. If that's not an argument for voting reform I don't know what is.

I've heard it said before that if these libertarians want somewhere where they don't have to pay taxes or worry about government interference, Somalia is their place to go!

My feelings are that fundamentalists have loaded the dice and gone for broke! The cost of being wrong to too great to contemplate. I'm thinking that next week, when once again, another sect of fundamentalist end-time believers, certain that they know the exact day when Jesus is coming back for them...are proven wrong, when May 21 dawns and passes into night without the rapture, are not going to say 'wow, I really blew that one...I better re-examine everything I thought I believed in.' That conversation is not going to happen! Instead it's going to be:'I was right, but my calculations are slightly off, the rapture really begins on ______', or 'I was right, the rapture happened and Jesus is here, but we just can't see him yet till the Tribulation is concluded' -- ref. Jehovah's Witnesses on that one. Many of us who have left fundamentalist religions first started having doubts in our teens that the church dogma and teachings...especially the ones that were contrary to the stuff we were learning about science at schools, kept quiet, and started slowly searching for alternatives on our own. The price for denying church doctrine meant being banished from the little community, so I waited until I was old enough to be out on my own anyway, and they had no power over me. I've heard similar stories from other youth who've fled fundamentalist cults and religions. In the end, I think it comes down to matter of our basic personality. Some people just totally lack any degree of curiosity, and are perfect fodder for fundamentalists to fill their minds. Others, want to do their thinking for themselves. The more authoritarian someone is in their thinking, the more likely they are going to be a fundamentalist also; while freethinkers avoid religious fundamentalism and authoritarian political movements as well.

FACT: using bible verses to fit a posteriori conclusions based on science Once again...for the umpteenth time, your sources..which profess their hatred for godless science, are depending on that same science to justify their faith. I have a challenge on this one: find me one early example, prior to the development of the Big Bang Theory, where theologians, priests or ministers, were teaching that the Universe was expanding! In light of present scientific understanding, fundamentalist preachers use a flimsy argument that "God stretching out the heavens" was describing the Big Bang. This is nothing more than a joke, that anyone else can never take seriously, and it feeds my thinking that fundamentalists' desperation for outside proof for their beliefs means that they are hanging by a thread, and they fear they have nothing to back them up with!

They are not trying to remove it in the manner that the majority of Ontarians want, as evidenced in the trouncing that John Tory got in the last provincial election! Most people want one secular public school system -- not the creation of a whole bunch of other religious schools, besides the Catholics, with public education tax dollars! Provide us some references for Sweden's education programme, because the voucher plans in the U.S. and England have made things worse, as difficult or slow-witted kids are removed from the charter schools, so they don't bring down their average test scores. Some have turned into separate religious schools which further balkanize ethnic communities.