Machjo

For those who aren't familiar, here is a brief intro to plurality-at-large voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting By open ballot, I mean one in which no names appear. So for example, if in a multi-member riding there are three seats to fill, then the ballot would simply have three lines on it, on which you'd write the names of three people with voting rights in your riding. Some might criticize this saying that many would write in the names of family members, friends, and other insignificant people in the community. My guess is though that the vast majority would choose to vote for locals who are well known and well-respected in the community. Another problem I could see with this would be that the winners do not want the position. Again, I think one solution would be to view it like jury duty, whereby it would be viewed as one's civic duty to lead if called upon to do so unless he has valid reason to turn down the position. I think such a system would rid us of egomaniacs, seeing that by definition you pretty well have to be an egomaniac to actively seek out office. And as for maintaining unity in Parliament in the absence of party control, bear in mind that plurality-at-large voting encourages landslides, so it increases the chances that the persons chosen will share similar views, and so this ought to help counter the lack of party discipline to some degree. On the one hand there would no longer be party discipline, but on the other it would be more likely that the MPs cold find points in common. Any thoughts on this?

In response to the title of tis OP. Why only the Liberal Party? All parties should be destroyed.

Then have at least one such launcher stationed at each airport, each with a range covering 100k let's say. Remember, airliners are not equipped with evasive devices.

And our current f18s can't handle that?

For cryin' out loud, the average Toyota wil signal if you forget to lock your door.I'm sure an airplane could have the same feature, no?

An F18 would be more than sufficient to shoot such a plane down. In fact, a simple surface to air missile launcher stationed on the coast could do that.

NO we should not stop worrying about it. If a person has irrational fears, he's a dangerous person to say the least. Now extend that to mass psychology, and a country experiencing irrational fears is a dangerous country. Looking at it that way, if a child has irrational fears, you have to deal with that. Either you let him sleep in your bed for the night, buy him a night light for awhile, or go into the closet to show him nothing is there. But you don't ignore those fears or there is no telling how people will respond. So if people have fears of the outside, then we have o try to find ways to alleviate those fears. Look, 9/11 led to wars, debt, etc. Obviously preventing 9/11 would also have prevented the fears. So if i'ts a choice between greater airport security and 9/11 type events which lead to thousands upon thousands of people dead on two continents over a decade, then I'd rather we have tougher airport security.

That's what international agreements are for. If we have an issue with that, then we reinspect them in Canada. We can always make cockpit doors solider, and if a terrorist can at most sneak a pocket knife on board, and that's if he's lucky, then having a few staff on board who know martial arts, combined with passeners eager to help to save their own lives, then you've got something going. It's true that most airplane service staff are women, but there are some men at times too, and combine that with martial arts skills along with passengers willing to help, and it woudl be tough for the passenger. Another possible solution would be for the government to make martial arts training free of charge for children for instance, so as to increase their interest in learning martial arts at a young age, maybe introducing them in public school. Even just simplified tai chi chuan would suffice for children looking for an easy martial art, as even that would still be better than nothing.

Not the same thing. International means, literally, inter- (between) -national (nations). An agreement between individual nations. Global refers to the globe, the planet, thus an alliance comprising all nations of the planet. Not at all the same thing. The UN is not an alliance as such by the way. NATO is, but that is an international and not global alliance. It's also a prejudiced aliance, and for that reason I'd rather Canada pull out of it. Personally, I like Sweden's approach. It has no alliances, yet it's still committed to UN peacekeeping operations. In fact, Swedish soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and though I don't know in detail the rule they're playing, I do know that they are operating under UN command, thus avoiding any impression of possible prejudice in their operations. And let's face it, impressions and appearances do matter.

Right... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan And these professed Christians don't share the same goal? So should we therefore fear the Christian Faith because of the KKK?

Agreed. If they should acquiesce to public pressure, it's like accepting guilt for something they did not do, which is anathema to American tradition. By building the mosque there, they are emphatically saying: We have f**k-all to do with this, so go blame the perpetrators and stop blaming us.

I fully agree. More security at airports, safer lockable cockpit doors, possibly free martial arts training for pilots and crew who want it, and possibly many other far more efficient options than a fighter aircraft. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

We're not members of any global alliance that I'm aware of. We are members of an international alliance, but certainly not a global alliance. Honestly, though I'm opposed to an international alliance, I'd actually support a global alliance.

Another idea I cold see would be a Plurality-at-Large open ballot. For example, if a riding has three seats to win, then the ballot would be a blank sheet of paper with three blank lines on it. You write down the names of the three people residing in your community who have voting rights themselves, and the three names that appear most frequently get the seats. Some might think this would lead to chaos as some people would vote for any friend or relative. My guess is though that the majority would vote for well-known and well-respected members of the community. Some might criticize this on the grounds that the winners might not want the seats in the first place, but we could look at it like jury duty. If the public want him, then it's his duty to serve unless he has good reason to turn it down. Thi would remove many egomaniacs from power too.

So what question would you ask?

Your thoughts.

And how are these jets to even make it to Canada? We don't really have any enemies in the Arctic, the US is an ally, and the only real enemies we have live an ocean away. Does North Korea have the ability to send fighter aircraft to Canada? What about the Taliban? Yes, Canada needs fighter aircraft,but it's not a priority and F18s are fine for now. Pay off the debt and then we can buy news jets then. Besides, by the time our debt is paid off, if not before that, these new jets will become obsolete too anyway.So let's keep the F18s for now, pay off the debt, and then buy the new planes of that time. It's not like Canadian soil is seriously threatened now is it?

And what threat is an aircraft off the coast of the arctic. Has Putin indicated any desire to invade Canada recently? Sweden? As far as I can tell, there aren't too many bogeymen up there.

Like I said, a hand-held anti-aircraft rocket launcher is just as effective.

The way I see it, the F35 is based on the old Cold War idea of being able to fight an equally advanced professional force. In the modern world, that's highly unlikely. Now it's usually guerrilla wars, and so the military must reflect that.

F35, a more expensive target for the Taliban's hand-held anti-aircraft weapons.

How many hand-held anti-aircraft weapons could we buy for the price of one of these aircraft? Cheap, easy to train someone to use, lightweight, small, compact, easy to use, and owing to the price, could easily outnumber aircraft by far. And since a man hiding in the bushes is much harder to spot than a fighter plane in the air, who has the advantage? Add to that that if the aircraft spots a soldier, a missile is an expensive way to get a few soldiers. If a soldier spots an airplane, a rocket of probably no more than a few hundred dollars could take a multi-million dollar airplane out of the air. Think about it.

I was reading this on the Gripen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAS_39_Gripen#Expeditionary_capabilities What's perhaps more interesting that the aircraft itself is the overall philosophy behind it. It was designed as an expeditionary aircraft, thus designed for low maintenance, ability to take off from short runways, etc. The idea stemmed originally from the Cold War with the idea that if Sweden were attacked by the USSR, the Swedish military would likley be eventually overrun, so the idea was to spread military supplies out across the country so that even if central military installations succumbed, Sweden could still inflict losses on the enemy. In that spirit, the Gripen can be refuelled by a truck on a regular civilian highway. As it turns out though, this expeditionary capability has also proven beneficial for peacekeeping operations since obviously such operations are not always conducted in ideal environments. But here you can see how Sweden's military philosophy is very different from the US one. It's not about being able to outdo any possible or imagined enemy on all fronts, which is bound to eventually bankrupt the country in the end, and that is financially unsustainable. The Swedish strategy is actually more like Switzerland's: You don't necessarily have to outperform the enemy militarily; you just have to make yourself enough of a potential nuisance for the enemy to conclude that though it could win against you, it could do so only under great losses to itself and so conclude that attacking you is just not worthwhile. Such a strategy is much more economically viable and sustainable and realistic. The impression I get is that the current government in Canada is trying to follow the US' economically unsustainable strategy. Personally, I think we ought to learn from the Swedish model. Let's not try to outdo all possible enemies on all fronts since that's just not possible. Let's aim for a more realistic strategy instead. Perhaps a Swedish-style military might be in order? Sure it can mean conscription for most, but it is a much more economically sound model, and government policy cannot be piecemeal, looking at each element independently from the others. It must take a more holistic approach, and that means looking too at how military spending, defense issues, and economic sustainability all interact.

Iraqis have managed to take down a number of US aircraft using weapons fare less expensive. The Taliban have shot down a few US helicopters too, and on some occasions US fighter planes were useless owing to the enemy being too close to friendlies, making the dropping of bombs risky, and firing cannons at that speed at a motionless target highly imprecise. This just does not reflect the reality of war today.