Choke

Young MPs think Alcock should grow up Seeing as I'm 22 and have run into this attitude more than a few times, it irks me that a member of the government that's supposed to represent me would say this sort of thing.

There are two BCs, one made up of Vancouver and Victoria, and one made up of the rest of the province. The rest of the province has much more in common with Alberta than it does with Vancouver and Victoria. When I said seceed, I mean we should form our own country, not join America. BC and Alberta together would be far richer than Canada, because inside Canada we get dragged down by the have-nots.

I think it should be judged on pre-pubescence vs post-pubescense. If it determined that someone is in possession of kiddy porn, by that standard, then I don't think there is any penalty too severe for them.

I think we have a choice to make: A} Stop supporting US military actions, this would mean complete withdrawl from Aghanistan and the Persian Gulf. If we did this, we'd have to start shopping around for a new trading partner. -Osama Bin Laden in his last address to the American people or B} Start funding the institutions that will allow us to support America wholeheartedly. Either way, this problem has been caused by a ten year waffle on defence...the Liberals say they want to fund it, but they never do.

At the time I saw through what they were doing, and I still supported the war. I knew there were no WMD and that even if there were Saddam didn't have the will to use them on Americans or give them to terrorists or he would have a long time ago. I also knew they just wanted the oil. I just figured a positive by-product of them invading would be an end to the sanctions, and that was enough for me to support the war. If Canada had joined the Coalition, I would've joined the armed forces. Bush didn't come because he wasn't welcome. Jean Chretien went out of his way to alienate Bush before and after 9/11. That's fine if he wanted to shift our trade completely out of North America, but no, he didn't want that, he just didn't like Bush because he's a Conservative.

If the world was so mad about this, they should've told America to back off, that it would mean war with, say Russia and China. I certainly wouldn't expect the EU to have that kind of guts but the Russians and Chinese could've done something if they wanted to and did not. Therefore there were no real objections.

I think that eventually, and this might sound silly now, there'll be fighters in space used to shoot down the satellites. If that happens, it'll mean aerospace research will get some sorely need funding. I think it is absolutely necessary that man learns to live in environments other than Earth so that if there ever were a catastophic event that killed everyone on the planet, like a nuclear war, or a slower destruction of Earth's atmosphere and ability to sustain life due to pollution, it wouldn't mean the end of humanity. I see the weaponization of space as a positive step toward that goal. Besides that, there's one important thing to remember. The military-industrial complex isn't going to go quietly into the night. If America doesn't spend money weaponizing space, they will have to spend it destroying things on Earth. The MI complex is going to have its way, either way. You pick.

I'm talking about nuclear war, not industrial accidents.

I meant accentuating the negative concerning the current situation, not about what might happen, since that's so much speculation involved that you can't be accused of lying about it, you're just expressing an opinion.

I'm not saying the whole economy has a glut of jobs, but in trades, that is certainly the case, and that's what we're discussing here, trade jobs.

It's an attempt to rewrite history with the victors becoming the villians...that very seldom works. How many people remember the objections people had to being conquered by Rome? How many people care? This legal action is an exercise in mental masturbation.

This statement when followed with this one: Is very telling...people have no idea what the system will actually do, but they're being provoked into hysteria about it by a few people who's purposes it serves to do so. There's a legitimate arguement to be made that the system wastes money, but as for the danger? We've had nuclear stockpiles sitting around for almost 60 years without a problem. Exactly.

Do you remember the last time an atomic weapon was used in aggression? It's 60 years this coming August. With all the massive stockpiles available to use, you'd think someone would have...but not even North Korea will. Every country knows that using these weapons would mean their own complete destruction, that won't change. It's this kind of attitude that would have rejected man developing basic tools because they could be used to hurt others...a hammer can be a weapon, but only in the wrong hands. I don't think America is irresponsible enough to use these new weapons for aggressive purposes.

Stoker's right, it's employers that are demanding tradesmen right now, not tradesmen demanding jobs.

I think it's inevitable since workers are now too apathetic to do anything about it. It'll have to get pretty extreme before anything gets done, IMO.

I think the long-term humanitarian benefits of developing this technology will be enormous. It'll motivate the US to move into space in a big way making possible future exploration and colonization.

This is nothing new. Mulroney wasn't exactly a "Conservative", and that's why he was able to win. Western rural moral values don't sell in Ontario and Quebec and they never will. BC and Alberta should seceed.

I think arms races are a good thing, they cause technology, that can later be used for humanitarian purposes, to be developed at astonishing rates. I tried, and I wanted to like Layton, I wanted him to be a smart, realistic guy...I WISH the NDP could find a leader that would bring them a chance of winning, but he's none of those things. He is consistantly NOT funny compared to the other party leaders, even Duceppe who uses English better than Layton does.

Argus is right.

After 9/11, Bin Laden had accomplished the biggest thing he's ever going to accomplish, and killing him now would have almost no impact on terrorism other than to make him a martyr and a saint in many people's minds in the Muslim world. Honestly, I don't think the Geneva Conventions are realistic in this war, just like they weren't in WW2 between Germany and Russia. When the opposing sides hate each other this much, the Conventions go out the window regardless of what their leaders say, so I think he's at least being honest about that. I think America built up the WMD case because no one else was willing to go to war without a threat from WMD. They DID try what you suggest, it failed, so they built the WMD case to try to salvage things. I don't think people outside America, and especially outside North America have ever trusted the American President or ever will, no matter what his name is.

Which is irrelevant since the most efficient system will still rule. If you cut profits, companies will move to markets where there are less restrictions, you're shooting yourself in the foot. The standards in developing countries will improve with time, but we can either try to keep on living the first world bubble we've created, or stop denying reality and become truly competitive on the world stage. If you make a personal attack on me, as I took your mocking me about my views on Iraq in a thread that has nothing to do with Iraq, I will remind you that you're going off-topic. This isn't moderating, notice how the post wasn't deleted, that's moderating, this is a reminder. I draw it at planet. You think the government deliberately wasted money? Why don't you just make up a theory of how they've been having bonfires using $50 bills, that's as plausible, in my opinion, as what you're saying.

Yes, but I don't think that's the case here...leaving Saddam in power would've been worse IMO, and not because he was horrendously evil, but because the sanctions combined with his post-Gulf War corruption made life intolerable for Iraqis.

At least now there's a chance they killing will end, as opposed to no chance. Would you rather Saddam had been in power another 20 years so another 1,000,000 could die?

Yes, but the point is that more people were killed by sanctions than by war itself and it is better to have ended the sanctions. I wish they would've just let Saddam have Kuwait, but that didn't happen and the only way to end the sanctions was to end Saddam's rule, and if you recall, he had no intention of surrendering.

The UN has no mandate to enforce the legality of war, so it really doesn't matter at all what they think, AT ALL.