SF/PF

Bollox. There are literally dozens of countries in the world that are more than capable of stopping Ghaddafi.

I suppose it depends on if we're speaking English or American.

Theres no need to let them take their whole fortune, though. Just enough that leaving is seen as an opion. Though in the case of uncle Moe, he is probably crazy enough to stay and fight anyway. As a more general rule, I think our fixation with "making dictators pay" for their actions just gets a lot more innocent people killed.

Theres something to be said for the "good ol days" when dictators were allowed to flee the country with a few million bucks and live out the rest of their lives in obscurity in a South American backwater.

Jones is one of my favourite fighters, but Shogun is too much for him. $5 MLW on Shogun!

First, why don't you explain how my reply that you quoted was "irrational relativism."

Ignoring for the moment the fact that trying to teach students the background and arguments for every existing creation story would requite extending K-12 to K-97, I dispute your notion that schools ought to buy into the "equal airtime" philosophy. Schools exist to teach children facts, not conjecture.

Do you understand what relativism means? How so? Acknowledging that christian holidays are sometimes left out and sometimes included (different schools, different teachers, etc) is now "squirm-atism?"

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Either way, it has very little educational value due to the omnipresence of christian holidays in our culture.

Schools are educational institutions, yes?

Because teaching students about something that completely saturates their culture and is utterly impossible to miss in the course of daily life isn't exactly an important educational experience. Yours is in the nativity scene set up outside almost every city hall for 2-3 months every year or the pithy pronouncements on billboards outside of every second church.

I can't honestly claim to understand that in the slightest.

I object to Craig's argument re: "objective meaning" on the grounds that "shit-I-just-made-up-in-a-flight-of-fancy-with-no-evidence-for-at-all" is pretty much the definition of "subjective illusion." The suggestion that mere facts offer less "objective meaning" than faith in the supernatural beggars belief. Clearly, Craig finds more meaning in those beliefs than in the entropic heat death of the universe, but thats just an aesthetic preference and inherently subjective. But for the sake of argument, lets assume for the moment that everything Craig believes about God and faith and fellowship is true. In that case, the reality of God would simply be another fact of the universe, along the lines of the future entropic heat death of the universe. And thus a "subjective illusion," as he puts it. I think I can pretty fairly summarize Craig's argument thus:

Craig throws around the word "objective" an awful lot, despite not having the slighest inkling as to what it means.

I agree with your comments in general regarding language, but English is structurally more vague and less precise than the romance languages. I don't have a lot of experience with other languages, but English seems to have an aweful lot of idioms. We use them so often that we often don't realize that we're doing it. I wonder if other languages make as much use of idioms, and if that could explain culturally differences in the appreciation of irony and satire (assuming that such differences are real)?

Perhaps the teacher saw an oppurtunity to teach the students about other cultures?

I cited the ruling that states Israeli occupations violate the fourth geneva convention, and then I cited the most relevant article of the fourth convention. Do you dispute that the intent of that article was to help prevent ethnic cleansing in the future? In fact, one of the legal arguments used to attempt to establish the legality of the settlements explicitly acknowledges the purpose of that particular article: Of course, no reasonable person has suggested that the occupied territories must be judenrein, only that the state of Israel can not legally transfer in new settlers to the occupied terrirory. An important difference.

Link Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention

Do you deny that the German invasion of France was for the purpose of expanding the nation of Germany?

Whether they have a connection to it or not is irrelevant. Unless you believe that England similarly has a right to annex the eastern sea-board of the United States because they have a "connection" to the area. It has nothing to do with equating the jews to nazis, but to show the incoherence of your reasoning. I chose an example that was wildly ridiculous to demonstrate the ridiculousness of your "argument."

Do unions bear responsibility for the organizational structure implemented by management? Management in government departments has a responsibility to ensure that their departments run as efficiently as possible. That includes only spending as much money as is required to fulfill the obligations of government to the standards established by that government. What you describe, in terms of trying to acquire as many resources as possible, is a perfect example of mismanagement. Indeed. But surely you must agree that it is management that has the power to rectify the situation. Workers have the responsibility to maximize their productivity. Management has the responsibility to ensure that workers are maximizing their productivity. Both management and workers should be progressively disciplined if they are not meeting their obligations. Quite right. Which makes me wonder why I've seen so many posters in this thread harping about how unions are to blame for low productivity when it is obvious to any observer that in any such situation, management has also failed spectacularly. And by all accounts they are actively working to acheive a refund, feeling that they have not received what they believed they were purchasing. I agree. Are you aware, though, that the bill passed doesn't address at all the "emergency" it was instituted to resolve?

Are you aware that international rulings on the illegality of Israeli settlements cite conventions aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing? Based on those rulings, it is a demonstrated fact that Israel has been engaged in ethnic cleansing, as defined by the international community, for quite some time. Are Palestinians "too white to qualify" as well?

Your argument, if it can be called such, seems to rely on the implicit assumption that any resistance to the illegal expansion of a state amounts to ethnic cleansing. Perhaps you would like to have a go at justifying that assumption. Applying the same logic, one might argue that the French resistance to Nazi rule amounted to ethnic cleansing on the part of the French.

On what planet does "totally unacceptable" equate to "not that bad.."? Really? Really?! Trudeau is completely correct on this. It has nothing to do with political correctness but with the degree of professionalism in writing. By calling the act "Barbaric," the guide is obviously trying to convey the fact that the act is.. oh, I dunno... totally unacceptable. So why not just say that? Clear, concise, specific. Hell, as others have pointed out, we have acts here in Canada that are barbaric and yet totally acceptable. If this came from a Smith or a Jones, I suspect the rhetoric would be a fraction of what it is.

Soo... can we see some condemnation?