easychair

On the contrary, democracy is good in practice but bad in principle.A constitutional, representative democracy means the majority is hemmed in and so in practice, the worst features of the mob are controlled. The representatives, in addition, can do deals on our behalf and express partly our varying feelings on issues. Michael, polls have nothing to do with the pointlessness of your individual vote. I am not saying that one person is insignificant in the world. I am saying that one vote is insignificant in an election. The weakness of democracy applies as much to the US as to Canada. Corporations are now under proper control (that the Left says otherwise depresses me to no end). When most people buy products from Walmart, work for Walmart or buy Walmart shares, they research, investigate and check what it is they are doing. Why? Because each individual benefits directly from making a good choice. "Sears offers better working conditions." "Canadian Tire has it cheaper."Now, compare that to the election of a (transnational) government. One of my neigbours told me he paid $7,000 in federal taxes last year. He doesn't know the name of our deputy and he didn't vote in the last election. Of course, my neighbour benefits from federal government expenditures. But those benefits are not contingent in any way on his individual vote. His benefits at Walmart on the other hand are directly contingent on his purchase choice. The last period of Globalization ended in August 1914 and the outbreak of World War I.The calm, tranquillity, stability and economic development of the 19th century gave us the basic scientific discoveries for all the technology we have in the 20th century. I'll stand corrected but it seems that since the 1920s, there has not been any great insights in physics on a par with the Michelson-Morley experiments, Einstein or Planck. Electricity, radio transmissions, radiation were all ideas of the 19th century. (OK, the double helix arrived in the 20th...) As to the Great Depression, I think most would now agree that the US Fed really, really bungled in the early 1930s. The international evidence shows clearly that economies improved when their countries left the gold standard (and stopped imitating the foolish policies of the US Fed at the time). The Fed wasn't the only bungler before the Great Depression. The securities industry was a disaster waiting to happen. One big inside baseball game. But you know, we continue to bail out the too big too fail guys and we probably always will.

Really? What is Europe? Very insightful post. I think most behavioral psychologists would say that it will take a generation or two of youth indoctrination to overcome tribalism in Iraq. Eliminating religious and ethnic tensions could take a lot longer depending on how hard you want a new dictatorship to come down on those problems. I think a quasi-democracy could work in Iraq with a benevolent dictator at the top to over rule the types of abuses you describe. But where are you going to find a benevolent dictator? You guessed it. And he'll be sure to be benevolent towards big oil too.

Yes, Alberta might be a bit like Montana or Idaho in that respect but Calgary has a diverse population and the people probably have diverse political opinions too. I don't talk national and international politics at cocktail parties or in other casual conversation (prefer the web for that) but I'm a down and dirty bastard when it comes to local politics so I would have to tone that down especially being an American. I'm pretty knowledgeable about government finance and municipal corruption (graft, kickbacks, bid rigging, etc.) so I can be a real pain in the butt to local politicians and their patrons. I also believe in sound city planning so I bet I'd clash with the full bore economic development types in Calgary. But I think I can behave myself.

I would have to agree that this would be a mighty large conspiracy theory. However, I would go so far as to say that there is evidence that the US knew beforehand about the attacks, and needed to allow them to happen. How is it that a US official bragged to the press "We knew Osama called his mother right after the attacks" and they knew nothing else? I never heard that bin Laden called Saudi Arabia right after 9-11. DIA and NSA/CSS would have been monitoring the telecommunications of bin Laden's friends and associates because he was already a wanted man for his other activities and attacks. He was probably using a satellite phone and would have left his location before they could beam him up. Still, it makes you wonder.

The US has no incontrovertible evidence whatsoever that Iran is making nuclear devices or trying to make them. The IAEC has nothing but greatly exaggerated reports that Iran has dual use technology which could be used for manufacturing WMD. And now Iran has offered them unfettered access to their facilities but Rummy and Bush are still ratcheting up for war. You mentioned deterrence and it would make sense in light of Israel's nuclear capacity (third in the world) for Iran to want to have some measure of protection against an Israeli air strike. As it stands now if they were to retaliate they risk a nuclear response. Having just one warhead would make Israel think twice. But my cousin, who's in the nuclear bomb business, says that thermonuclear weapons are first and foremost political weapons and he doesn't think any state is stupid enough to use them. Nukes in the hands of terrorists would be a different story. That's the topic on the radio right now. This is the second program in a row on a subject. The first one was a speech by Rummy to the National Press Club in which he reiterated again that "we must take the fight to the terrorists." Read: Iran. Does anybody think that Saddam Hussein or Iran would spend billions on WMD development and then turn those weapons over to a band of unpredictable extremists? Osama bin Laden hates Saddam and his ilk and I'm sure he's not fond of the Iranian government either. He wants a totalitarian sectarian society for all of Muslim society. I'll tell you what's going to happen. CIA and Mossad are spooking Iran and Israel has been threatening an air strike. There's going to some sort of manufactured incident like a border clash in Iraq or an alleged *Iranian sponsored* attack on Israel. Something will happen to give the Bush Administration justification for striking Iran. Mark my words.

Can you tell me where you heard W call 9-11 his trifecta? I don't think the Saudis who hit WTC and the Penatgon were part of a U.S. funded government conpiracy because our alphabet soup intel agencies spook each other constantly and it would have been very difficult to conceal. Not to mention the multi-level cooperation you'd have to have at all the other agencies (FAA, NORAD, NTSB, etc.) to pull it off. Someone would have blown the whistle. I do believe American policies were the catalyst for Islamist extremism and we did train terorists in Afganistan during the war with the USSR. We've trained terrorists in lots of other countries too including Columbia where we've been fighting a secret war for forty years. However, I will say that it's a total crock that we never anticipated planes being used as missiles and there are still many unanswered questions about massive protocal and procedure failures during the 9-11 hijackings. My mind is still open though. I'm aware of the connections you made but there's still plausible deniability.

I'm a native Callifornian and my family goes back to before the Gold Rush in Northern California. I no longer live there. I left for business reasons but every time I go back to visit I lament what has happened to the environment and the culture. Parts of California have become cultural and environmental cess pools and for the first time more people are leaving California than people coming to settle there. Many Californians have just headed north to Oregon and Washington and residents there are not pleased. They have a bumper sticker in Oregon that says, "Don't Californicate Oregon." I don't blame them. Anyway, this leads to my point about whether Americans are welcome to immigrate to Canada. A friend of mine and I have a vacation compound in the little village of Playa Azul in the Mexican state of Michoacan. We go there twice a year and when we're there we always say how nice it is to be out of America and away from American attitudes. There aren't many gringos in Playa Azul but we occasionally see a few arrogant Americans throwing their money around and treating the locals who wait on them like chattel. And for some reason they're always surprised to learn that all Mexican girls are not for sale. My friend recently bought a house for his daughter in Calgary. She's a member of the U.S. Olympic junior speed skating team and wanted to go to Calgary University because they have the best oval in North America. She's renting rooms to other speed skaters to pay the mortgage and it's working out fine. When she's through with college my friend and his wife are seriously considering moving into that house and becoming permanent residents. And I'm thinking of getting a place there too. I really like Calgary and I like Canadian culture. People are generally more open, less prejudiced, and dare I say it, better educated than the average American. I definitely prefer the Canadian system of government and that might be the number one incentive for me to move to Canada. I don't hate America and it's been very good to me and my family but I'm just weary of its politics and its wars. I don't want to be a part of it any more. I'm sure that statement will provoke some of the American conservatives on this site but I'm used to their rants from participating on other discussion sites. I've always felt welcome as a visitor in Calgary but I'm not an insider so I wanted to get some feedback from Canadians on they feel about American immigrants. I know there's been some controversy about the immigration issue but I haven't followed it much.

I'm an American and I recently saw a scientific poll of 35 nations that showed overwhelming disaproval of the Bush Administration. Most Americans know France opposes Bush and the war in Iraq but I don't think they're aware of how extensive the anti-Bush, anti-American sentiments are in the world at large. We certainly don't see much news about Canadian public opinion and Canadian government positions towards the U.S. I wish we did. I wish the Canadian government would take a more strident position against the Bush doctrine because it is placing the Canadian people in grave danger. This is not partisan hyperbole. As I said in my other post, Iraq is just the starting platform for the Pax American war plan and the next objective is Iran. We are headed for a catastrophe of biblical proportions but the American people are like a frog doing a slow boil in a pot of tepid water. They don't see the warning signs even though Bush has been sending signals about Iran ever since his infamous Axis of Evil speech. If Canada does not take a strong stand against a wider war it should not complain when it gets drawn into the fire.

I'm an American trying to escape the relentless flaming of rabid conservatives on political discussion sites. But I suppose they're here too. The truth is that terrorist attacks against the United States will be much much more likely under another Bush Administration because if Bush is reelected America will go to war with Iran. I've followed the neocon movement since the late Eighties and I've watched Wolfowitz, Perle, and the rest of their cabal gradually develop their prememptive war strategy which is now known as the Bush Doctrine. They had been trying to implement it for years but shortly before 9-11 they said it wouldn't come to pass unless America suffered another "Pearl Harbor type Attack." After 9-11 Wolfowitz and the newly created Office of Special Plans did a complete end run around the intelligence establishment and manipulated Bush into declaring a holy war against the entire Muslim world. They exploited Bush's fundamentalist world view and made him believe that he was leading a messianic mission to save the world from a demonic Islamist threat armed with WMD and hell bent on annihilating Israel and the Judeo-Christian West. Iraq is just the starting platform for the neocon Pax Americana plan and the Pentagon and the White house have been ramping up the rhetoric about Iranian state sponsored terrorism and Iran's alleged WMD program. On the one hand you have Rumsfeld making totally false assertions about Iran's nuclear program and involvement in the Iraqi insurgency and on the other you have Bush saying we will take the war to the terrorists and strike wherever we find them. You don't have to be a political scientist to figure out what's coming. Iran has internal terrorist elements and Iranian banks are used to conduit terrorist money but the new moderate government can't act forcefully against them until it can gain significant concessions from the West and assure the nation that American hegemony is no longer a threat to Islamic rule. They have offered international inspectors unprecedented access to their nuclear facilities and were rejected by the Bush administration and their recent pledge to help Iraq stem the flow of insurgents across borders was ignored and then called disingenuous by Secretary Rumsfeld. Iran is our only hope for winning the war on Islamist terrorism. They have enormous influence in the Muslim world and could neutralize the radical mullahs from Saudi Arabia to Indonesisa. America should force Israel to stand down and open its nuclear weapons program for international inspection. Then they should be made to disarm. There will be no peace in the region as long as the balance of power is so lopsided in Israel's favor. We should normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, return their confiscated assets, allow American companies to invest in Iran's economic development, and work with Iran and other Muslim nations (particularly Palestine) on a plan of reconcilliation. This is not appeasement. A political solution is the only option for the Middle East but if Bush is returned to power we must prepare for an all out war with a nation of sixty million people and a world wide jihad.