bariboh

( Let me apologize for posting this at the last minute. It took me a while to clue in to the 5-post minimum. It's a hectic time of year and I'm a bit jaded. ) Hello! I am a third-year undergraduate student of public policy at Carleton University. As a term paper for my policy research class, I am conducting a content analysis of six Canadian political message boards, including this one. A content analysis is a systematic assessment of the form and substance of a medium of communication. Ethical considerations play a very minor role in this type of research because researchers can imply consent from the fact that the material they are examining has been published. Also, there is no direct contact with the researcher and the authors of the content, so nothing that the researcher does can severely impact the authors’ well-being. University ethics codes contain rules that reflect these assumptions, and they consider anything that is freely available on the internet to be “published material”. For this reason, I began my study without asking for your consent. My research looked only at messages that related to Afghanistan and were posted in September 2006 or December 2008. I looked for differing opinions about Canada’s mission, how these were articulated, how the debate progressed, and how the medium of communication affects the conversation. Over the course of my research, I got the feeling that I was eavesdropping. I learned in class to trust my intuition when it comes to ethics; uncomfortable feelings are often an indication of ethical issues that need to be discussed. This message is a part of what sociologists call “debriefing”. Once the observation phase of a study is complete, researchers conduct interviews with their subjects in order to better understand how the research affects the subjects personally. This helps to clarify ethical questions for future research. I want to know what you think about my study, especially in regard to the following questions: 1) Do you consider your forum posts to be public information or a private conversation? 2) Do you feel that I violated your privacy in reading and/or studying your posts? 3) Should I have asked for permission first? 4) Would it violate your privacy if I quoted your post in my paper? 5) Would it violate your privacy if I referred to your username in my paper? 6) Would your opinion be different if my paper were to be published? (It won’t.) 7) Would your opinion be different if I were working for the government? (I’m not.) Feel free to offer anything that you think will help me with these ethical questions, and my research in general. I am also curious about who you all are in real life (e.g. age, occupation, etc.), though I understand if you want to preserve your anonymity. I will check back in a couple of days to address any concerns you might have. I am also happy to post the final version of my paper, once I am finished writing it. Thank you! Grégoire Baribeau 3rd Year Public Affairs and Policy Management Specializing in International Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

In order to weaponize one of the plagues, they would have to develop a strain that is resistant to vaccines. There has been a theraputic plague vaccine around for centuries. The question we should be asking is whether Al Qaeda is sophisticated enough to develop a vaccine-resistant plague. Somehow I doubt that. In my view, the greatest danger related to biological weapons and terrorist groups involves those stolen from labs owned by governments.

If you take a bunch of 20-year-olds from Canada, hand them some automatic weapons, then drop them in an environment where they are being shot at by people speaking a language they don't understand, you could expect war crimes to be committed. Add the culture of distruct that exists between Palestinians and Israelis, and you can reasonably expect more war crimes. Some units in the IDF acted honourably and treated the Palestinians they encountered with respect. Others acted like barbarians. This should be no surprise. War is nasty business. Obviously those that committed war crimes should be punished, but war crimes are committed in every war. If you want to stop war crimes, you must stop war.

The pirates are part of the overall bandit economy that emerged in Somalia after the collapse of the state institutions. Many are former fisherman that began as vigilante groups who attacked foreign fishing ships that were operating in Somali territorial waters without government permission. Some gangs even call themselves "the Somali Navy" or "the Somali Coast Guard". It didn't take long for them to realize that merchant ships were more lucrative than fishing boats, so the transition from vigilante to pirate was a natural one. Much like the pirate problems in 18th Century West Indies, these will not be solved until there is a stable government on the ground. However, Egypt has for years been sparking chaos upstream in order to prevent development that would challenge the Egyptian monopoly to Nile water. The is a VERY complicate situation and I don't know how to solve it.

I'm not sure if that poll is particularly useful; everyone has a different conception of what constitutes capitalism and what constitutes socialism. Is the welfare state capitalist or socialist? Is communism socialist? Are the respondants talking strictly about the economic systems or the political systems as well?

This seems to be quite a controversial topic (21 pages!). I think there are regional differences at play; owning a gun in urban Toronto is very different from owning a gun in rural Saskatchewan.