Moonbox

Waldo, I have to say I agree with some of your points, but I also have to say that your posts are becoming aweful to read. Ignoring the walls of text and your horrible quote-within-quotes of ugly, your vocabulary really needs a serious review. Come on man. Nobody should use "notwithstanding" ever. It's a useless, overbearing word that can be easily replaced with less cumbersome language, and you're not even using it properly. Aforementioned isn't much better, and when you string a paragraph together with such verbosity, it's not only painful to read, it also looks like you're trying to hard. Your whole last post could have been stated as: I don't give this report much credit. The ranking change is insignificant, there's an obvious right-wing bias, there's no critical review offered and nobody explains what Harper's government has specifically done to improve our ranking. Instead we got an 11-line wall of notwithstandings. Your point, I think, has some merit. Much of Harper's success was inherited but you can't argue that he's trying to make Canada more business/corporate friendly and he has taken steps to reduce the public service burden. This report is merely a confirmation that a pro-business think-tank believes that Canada is becoming more pro-business under the Harper government.

It was the furthest thing from a precisely written argument. It was a series of sloppy, lazy and poorly formatted walls of text that basically copied the last few pages of the thread. Nobody read it nor should anybody be expected to read it. Make your point succinctly and if you want to include a link then do so, but don't even bother posting garbage like that.

In red China, teacher sex with student all the time! Everyone fun!

Why is this even an issue worth discussing lol? The election is eons away. Bob Rae isn't going to have good numbers because it's known he's not a permanent leader. Mulcair's numbers are low because he's brand new and shadows in comparison to Layton in terms of charisma. Harper's numbers are high because (duh) he's PM, he's run several successful elections and because he appears to have an iron grip on his party.

but the average person has no idea is what I'm saying. I'm not saying the science and the religion are the same, I'm saying the average Joe's acceptance of whatever conclusions are popular is. Isn't it true, however, that scientists don't have a perfect understanding of any of this? If this is the case, does it make it crazy to have people at least questioning their findings?

Understood, but at the same time you have to understand that the other side is guilty of the same sort of blind zeal. Most people can't hope to understand a scientific climate model nor the findings of a climate scientist, yet they're more than happy to pile on and lynch someone who's raising questions. To the average person, what's the difference between a clergyman from the Middle Ages telling his flock the way nature worked and a climate scientist telling us what the computer models show us? The average person just accepts what he's told and comes to believe it as fact, unable to verify it himself. A climate change 'denier' is one thing. A climate change 'skeptic' is something altogether. Some skepticisim is healthy. The possibility that climate scientists haven't been accurate or that some of them are dishonest should always be entertained.

I think your quotes got a little mixed up

I think the belief is that this information is mostly being ignored and climate science is focusing merely on computer models. The philosophy is that it's in the best interest of climate scientists to make things seem as horrible as possible so as to get people more interested in their work and encourage more funding. The other problem is how unpleasant people like you are when talking about this sort of thing. If anyone has a question or concern or shows uncertaintity, or God forbid a problem with the suggested course of action, they receive heaps of ridicule and gets lumped into the 'crazy denier' pile. The movement does share a lot in common with religious dogma and for a lot of people, like myself, that's scary.

Montreal would stay with Canada. That's all I'd care about.

I think it's more a matter of 'not screwing up'. He's in a comfortable position with an extremely weak opposition. If he just keeps his mouth shut and doesn't rock the boat too hard his numbers will stay positive.

Timelines huh? What sort of literature have you followed on the subject? Al-Qaeda is a direct result of Soviet and Western Imperialism. They're both responsible. Al-Qaeda would not likely have existed without the Soviet invasion. It gave the Islamic world a focal point for people like Bin-Laden aside from just Israel. The Mujahadeen in Afghanistan was a romantic quest for young Arabs and it ignited the imaginations of both the pious and zealous all over the Islamic World.

Most of the world never experienced it. Western Europe, however, did. England was a perfect example of the chaos that ensues. The region was a mess of local warlords and so-called kings going at each other for hundreds of years. Umm...That's kind of what I was getting at. You'd claimed that Britain's occupation of India didn't erase the previous 'nationalism' of its inhabitants. Perhaps you're using a different definition of nationalism (there are many) but the fact is that Britain completely transformed Indian society and it was profoundly different when they left. It didn't completely erase the ethnicity or culture of the inhabitants, but politically it was pretty much an empty slate when they left and a rather big mess at that. India and Pakistan went to war and continue to fight over Kashmir. This is the sort of instability the West wants to avoid in the Middle East. A primordial definition of 'nation' could mean that. By that definition, there's a Gyspy Nation as well. For our purposes, however, this doesn't mean much. It's just an ethnic group. A modern take on nationalism involves more tangible things, like a central authority largely able to maintain unity within a state, self-sustraining economy/infrastructure and a population that identifies with a political system and land rather than just common ancestry and race/religion. I said conflicts outside of Europe were generally far larger and far more devastating. You response was that medieval historians exaggerated numbers. If that's the case, then numbers were exaggerated for both European and non-European wars, still leaving non-European ones much larger and more devastating. What I was trying to say was that your assertion that numbers were exaggerated by chroniclers of the time has ZERO impact on the point being made. As impressive as you may think that is, your family/acquaintances do not make you an expert on these subjects. My sister is a PhD studying Alzheimers. She talks about it all the time. I ask her questions about it. I still no next to nothing about it, especially how to spell the damn word. If your daughter's medieval history background rubbed off on you so strong, you wouldn't have said: the mongol invasion was very short term and petty... because the exact opposite was true and this isn't exactly obscure info.

Oh the hypocrisy. Please guys. Everyone is guilty of this to some extent or another. Some are obviously far worse and we know who they are, but please don't act like you're these shining bastions of pure logic and reason. I've seen enough examples in the past to know that's not true.

Learn some history. The invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR was the birth of Osama Bin Laden as a 'freedom fighter'.

Shady man...sometimes you don't really help the argument out at all. The US has a long history of arming militants and people they'd now consider terrorists.

Long term imperialism completely rewrites the landscape. Ever heard of the Dark Ages? When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, it wasn't as if Britain all of the sudden united and said, "Sweet! Now we're all Britons and we'll run our own show." Instead, the area fell apart into bands of feuding warlords and so-called kings that didn't get resolved for hundreds of years. I'm not sure you understand what nationalism means, otherwise you wouldn't have brought up the Bedouins or the Berbers. Even so, you're still not getting it. Let's take India, for example. Prior to British rule, there wasn't an "India". There was a subcontinent of different kingdoms, principalities and empires, and no notion of "Indian" nationalism. The British took over the subcontinent they called India and ran the show for 150 years, after which they relinquished control. The transition was a mess, something like 12 million people died, Pakistan and "India' were separated, and India to this day remains a mess of different ethnic groups that don't get along and barely functions as a state. Minorities are brutally suppressed and armed gangs of thugs (semi-official militia) keep dissenters in line. The partition of India is no different than the partition of the Middle East. It was handled extremely poorly and the poorly drawn borders have only been maintained by force and, hate to say it, cultural genocide. and historians today adjust for that in today's literature and generally have accounts from both sides. If you read any of this stuff you'll find there's always a high and a low estimate. I'm not sure what this proves, however, because this would be true for both Europe and the Middle East, so this doesn't change the fact that European conflict was generally on a much smaller scale. By the way, where do you find these people? You live with a medieval historian, your brother in law is a military tech genius or whatever...next time we argue your wife is going to be a Fortune 500 economist or something! I really didn't, but nice try. You mentioned 19th century Germany and I brought up Prussia and Wallacia (Wallacia was totally wrong but w/e). If I wasn't responding about 19th century Germany I wouldn't have brought up Prussia. Doh!

I'm not sure you understand what nationalism means...

Charlemagne was 1200 years ago. His cultural impact on most of Europe would have been akin to Napoleon's or Hitler's (ie flashes in the pan). You have to go back to the Romans to find the sort of century-spanning subjugations that happened over and over again in the Middle East. The nobility bickered over territory and succession. Very little changed. I was responding to your claims of Germany still being fractious in the mid-19th century. Language was a dog's breakfast all over Europe through the middle ages. You could go to the next town over (in France, Spain or wherever) and not understand what anyone was saying, such was the impact of the fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. It took hundreds of years for language to finally homogenize. Because the nobility, for a long time, listened to what the Pope said and Europe was largely held peaceful for that time. The wars of the European Middle Ages were petty compared to the wars of Antiquity and what was going on around the rest of the world. Sure, there was lots of fighting, but it was the result of a bored and useless feudal class that didn't know how to do anything BUT fight. The elite in Europe mostly couldn't read and spent their childhoods training for war. One of the reasons the First Crusade happened was because Pope Urban wanted to find an outlet for the bickering nobility. They just wanted to fight. They didn't care who they fought against really and the idea of fighting in the name of their religion had great appeal. So they went, levelled cities in the name of Christianity and slaughtered everything they encountered along the way. Absolutely. In terms of scale and lasting repercussions it was as petty as it gets. You had a bunch of French and English nobility squabbling over who was in control of what, and large periods of inactivity and siege were broken up by tiny battles like Poitiers, Crecy, Agincourt and Formigny, which, although romanticized and made famous, were puny affairs in terms of numbers. The English army at Agincourt was less than 10000 strong and that was one of the bigger battles of that conflict. Compare that to battles in Antiquity, or battles that were happening in the Middle East and the rest of the world, where numbers would peak over 100,000 easily... No. Interestingly, however, these were the first industrial-scale conflicts the world had ever seen and were stoked by the flames of nationalism. Is it a coincidence that the belligerents were all the same? Germany/Austria (or Prussia/Austria), Russia, Britain, France? Hmmm... If you think that then you really don't know anything about it. The Mongol invasion devastating and its occupation, under different names and rulers, lasted for hundreds of years. Look up the Chagatai Khanate or the Timurids. In any case, those conflicts were absolutely catastrophic for the mid-east. Timur's campaigns in Persia etc wiped out 5% of the WORLD's population. The Mongol invasions were worse, and the Mid-East campaigns were some of the bloodiest. Genghis Khan brought 200,000 warriors to Khwarazmia in a campaign of vengeance. The Mongol invasions wouldn't be matched in death toll until World War II, which required 1940's urban populations and industrialized weapons of indiscriminate slaughter. You don't know what you're talking about. You have a case with the Turks, but the Persians and the Egyptians? Nope. They've spent the vast majority of the last 1500 years under the yoke of one despot or the other and haven't been self-determining for about 1000 years. I'm not sure what your problem is with what I'm saying. The Middle-East experienced large scale invasions and imperialism throughout its ENTIRE history. It was conquered, subjugated and held for hundreds of years, collapsed and was re-conquered over and over and over again. This didn't happen in Europe. The two regions have VERY different histories.

Silly. Our system of law is not based on abitrary things you, or anyone else, finds irritating. Prove it causes harm and is worth going to court over or just suck it up and deal with it like the rest of us. That wasn't meant to be rude btw.

This is just an observation, and I'm not sure if it applies to you, but I find it funny how a lot of people who make this argument will say "Shut up and agree with the the climate scientists because they're experts." but then will vehemently support economic policy from a no-nothing like Thomas Mulcair and ignore everything the consensus from economists. Neither 'science' is terribly exact and neither can account for the variables. Why isn't skepticism acceptable?

Well that's more a matter of a BS securities market and the tendency for commodities exchanges to go haywire at the merest sign of trouble. Libya accounted for like 2% of the world's oil supply. The rebellion last year caused more than a 2% hike in price.

It was all under the Holy Roman Empire (mostly Germanic) and was that way for 900 years. Prussia, Bohemia, Austira, Wallacia (sp?) etc were all germanic, spoke German, and shared the same sovereign. You'll note my post stated: By the 11th-12th century most of Europe had stablized under ethnic and cultural boundaries we still see today What's more is that most of Europe was all under heavy influence of the Pope for much of that time, although there were plenty of problems related to that as well. As I already mentioned, Europe's wars were petty compared to what was seen in the Middle East. Care to offer any recent (ie last 1000 years) European comparisons to the Seljuk conquests, the Crusades, the Mongol invasion, the Timurids or the Ottomans? Entire civilizations were obliterated and cities razed to ashes. Populations were subjugated for hundreds of years. Ways of life were wiped out. This happened over and over and over again in the Mid-East.

pls delete- double post

It's not that simple though. A shock to the oil supply can have a HUGE impact on the entire world's economy. The world's economic powers aren't comfortable with uncertaintity in the oil supply. Desert Storm was a direct reaction to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The US's message (even to its former ally) was DON'T ROCK THE BOAT. Not only was the interruption of the oil supply not okay, but one of the major players swallowing up its neighbours was even scarier. The world doesn't want one player holding too much influence over prices and supply either. Except imperialism is all the Middle East has known for the last 3000 years.

I'm not sure how much of a student of history you are but they're incredibly different. Nationalism has, more or less, existed in Europe for hundreds of years. An Englishman has been an Englishman, a Frenchman a Frenchman, a Spaniard a Spaniard and a German a German for centuries. Borders have been re-written more based on marriage than anything, and wars fought more over which member of the family was entitled to what than anything else. By the 11th-12th century most of Europe had stablized under ethnic and cultural boundaries we still see today. The 'wars' fought over that period in Europe were relatively minor squabbles between members of a feudal class who were trained to do nothing but fight and were just plain bored. Famous battles like Agincourt were merely squabbles compared to the giant civilization destroying Seljuk, Cruader or Mongol invasions of the Mid-East. Those wars wiped the slate clean and often COMPLETELY changed everything. Nationalism in the Mid-East is maybe 100 years old now, and poorly defined at that. See above. Mine are based on a passing knowledge and intense interest in the last 2000 years of history. I'm not sure what yours is based on.