Actually after posting I read your post from yesterday and it was very insightful.
I was just letting off a bit of stream from some of the posts in this thread. I replyed to yours because I was bothered by you refering to those who respect the American founding fathers of the US as knuckleheads. Comparing the American revolution to the Bolshivik and French revolutions we will find that the American leaders were much more concerned with liberty and maintaining the goals then the other two. If one is to look into any hero they will see that they are not perfect, and this happened at a different time in history. A million wrongs will not tarnish a single right, and what the founding fathers did was great advancement for democracy and deserve to be respected for that.
I was not moderated up, my account default to 2 points, and I assure you that I am perfectly capable of reading english.
it's not my job to completely educate every nincompoop that posts.
Well what about the reign of terror, Stalins purges, Hitlers concentration camps, the list goes on. Perhaps these 'knuckleheads' and 'nincompoop' know about these and realize that their country is not alone, and is one of the most important countries in the formation of modern democracy.
I live in Canada and looking back we have done sme awful thngs to our natives and to early Asian immigrants. Every country has these spots on their history, and their is not reason to continually blame them for them. Rational thinking will tell us that if we blame someone they will try and avoid speeking about it. This is not the way to prevent it from happening. Do you blame the current German government for the third reich? No, but we do remember it, and this is the same way that we must treat all the errors of our past.
Enlightenment, especially older verions have terrible focus behavior and defaults. I would recommend getting a new version of enlightenment and looking through focus settings. The sawfish window manager works better with gnome, though you will have to fix the focus settings also(very easy). I would recommend using helix gnome, it works very well and is far better out of the box than any other distribution. I think it can be used with any 6.x version of redhat, and apperently the rpm version is very easy to install.
This is an interesting view from their side of the story, and I am happy to see that it is personal, and not filtered through 10 different lawyers.
I have not been following this much, so this was the first statement that I have heard from them. It would be easy to dismiss this by saying that they don't understand napster or the technology, and because of this are making a mistake. This is not necessarily the case. The statistics that he provided we very sobering to the idea that napster helps both independent and major label artists (napster, not mp3). We must look at it from their side as well as our own, and understand that they feel threatened by napster, and when we feel threatened it is a natural reaction to fight. What tends to be ignored on slashdot is that they are legally just in what they are doing. It is their property and we must respect that.
On the other hand, I bought S&M after listening to mp3's of it, gotten from napster. I honestly think that what they are doing is not in their best interest and only time will tell. I also believe that any laws banning something like napster would set a dangerous precedent, akin to banning paint because people sniff it.
While do not doubt that guns are part of the problem in the US, there are many other factors. Social and economic differences, and racial relations being major concerns. There is no single problem that can differentiate the countries, but the mindset of the citizens must also be taken into account.
Just as a comparison, I live in Canada. The population is about 1/10 of that in the US. However the deaths due to firearms are 1/100 of that in the US. The reason? Guns control
I am also Canadian, and if I'm not mistaken, the crimerate in Canada is about 1/10 of that in the US. While I agree that gun control can help stop crime, this has little to do with the differece in gun related deaths between the countries. We also must remember that Canada has not had a strong gun control system, and the one currently being implemented is still not as effective as it could be. A better comparison might be to a European country with a strict policy such as Britain.
I must be a hick because I'm from Alberta, and lean toward the Canadian right wing (which is really the center). Its a good thing our left wing government implemented a gun registration system that allows for unwarranted search and siege based on _seizure_ of unregistered guns.
Oh, and thank you for showing your superiority over us with generalizations and mistruths.
Yes, but the problem is the people, not the religion. The real problem with the christian relgion is that people have adapted and used it as an excuse to do bad things. Examples of this are nothern ireland over the past 30 years, and the southern US prior to the 70's (its still happening there, but it has gotten much better since then). Religion is something that each person has, and is molded around who they are. What I am saying is while some people may use their religion for evil, most of us only use it for good.
I live in Calgary, Alberta. Within the last few days our city library board recently voted on content filtering for public libraries. When I first read about it i was concerned that it was happening, but after looking into it, the way it works should be pleasing to everyone but the two extremes. It works such that everyone will have access to unrestricted content, however parents will be able to specify if their child should have the full access or the restricted access. It would also be possible for anyone to use the restricted access if they felt that the internet was to scary without it. I understand that many people will see it as test prior to full scale blocking, however i have faith in the library board that they will not do this. The vote was eight in favor and two opposed, with one of the opposed saying that it was to restrictive, and the other(from a feminist group) saying it was not restrictive enough. This makes me believe that this is the way that it will stay. Just for those that do not know, Calgary is a fairly wealthy city that is moderate to conservative, but we tend to be quite liberal when it comes to our rights. Our economy is still somewhat based on oil also have the highest number of university graduates per capita, if that means anything to you. I personally would restrict my children's access, simply because of how easy it is to stumble across content that is not good for children(you know what I'm talking about), but when they are older i would remove it so that they will not have to deal with the stupidity of the companies that control the filtering. At home I do not use filtering, but instead supervision, it is far more effective than anything else, although it is not practical at a library.
Re:Part of a four-volume trilogy ...
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your opinion is that of someone quite far left(strong socialist). From my view (centralist), while the US is right politically, there is little resistance to socialist ideals, besides dismissing them as ineffective. Communism is a very different matter, but i feel that this is rightfully so. While now is not the time to start a debate on communism, because communism is so far to the extreme the only way to maintain it is with a dictatorship. This leads to a situation much like that of fascism, which is treated very similar to communism in the US. This leads me to believe that the ideals of dictatorship are more of the concern to Americans, and not socialist politics. I think that you are mistaking the strong corporate lobby in the US for the ideals of the citizens and leaders, although the leaders will do much for money (this is the biggest flaw in the country).
Well thank you for making your post intellegent, it makes it much easier to have a resonalble debate on an issue.
He writes books that take ideas seriously, even those he personally disagrees with. This makes the man worth his weight in diamonds.
This one skill is not just valuable for writers, but for every single person. We tend to only limit our thoughts only to what we personally believe in, considering the rest as hearsay. By being able to actually see an issue from another viewpoint is what rational really is. I took a Political science course in University, and in it we were told to write an essay defending an opinion and one attacking the same opinion. In doing that i gained more insight than i ever would have only defending the position, and i urge everyone to try this before attacking someone else's opinion.
Re:Part of a four-volume trilogy ...
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Every time i see a post such as yours it makes me cringe just a little. As a Canadian who has lived in both Britain and the United States, as well as several other countries, i think your eyes are so closed to what is around you that you cannot see the good in Americans. You present most americans as Ignorant to other's ideas. In doing this you are closing your eyes and ears, and become the ignorant one. I do not mean to insult you, only to point out something that i see far to often on slashdot. Please don't flame me, but rational responses would be appreciated.
Finally, and what I think is really important right now is to actively use the country code in domains. Browsers can easily be configured or patched to automatically end.com and the other TLD's in the appropriate country code (.us, etc) Yes, this means that by default, a person in the UK would have to go "www.apple.com.us", but this is necessary to remove the American-ization of the Internet, and would limit domain name disputes to within countries only (no etoys vs etoy problems).
This would not de-Americanize the internet, but instead de-internationalize the internet, leaving it as only a shadow of what it is now. Three situations:
What if someone such as myself in Canada wanted to buy something off of an American site such as ebay. Unfortuatally i end up getting another site from Canada, perhapes the hbc online store. I want an ebay, not a department store. What if i wanted a site in France, but i didn't know it was in that country, what do i do now.
What if i am a company based in Canada, however i ship product anywhere. I now must register my name in every country, dealing with language bariers, stupid name server systems (your suggestion), and corrupt people wishing to charge me $20000 because my name is known in other counties. Now i am an international free software project, i hope i get a grant soon.
I am a well known Canadian company selling to the US and UK. Unfortuatally an enterprising person has registered my name in those country and has but up a porn site. When someone in that country tries to go to my site they are instead taken to a porn site. This looks bad.
The internet is international. It is also dominated by the US, but there are reasons for this, and if you don't like it, start your own network and only let those who are america-phobic on it. An international network is useful, but will be dominated by the countries with the largest population/use, this is true of everything. Perhaps you should look into how to get a domain in Canada, and then look at the situation with the generic tlds, it really changes your outlook.
I hate the way that sun versions their product. SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 = Solaris 7 This becomes worse when you are also dealing with people running different verions of both Solaris and SunOS.
What seems to have happened with both MS and Sun is that the marketing people are now controlling the versions, not the developers. Solaris 7 sounds (at least in their eyes) more mature than 2.7, and microsoft follows the same logic with with windows 2000 over NT 5.0.
I think that microsoft will stick with the year system at least until the two braches are merged, which was what was supposed to happen with 2000, oh well.
The cause of the great depression was not the federal reserve. It was the banks and the way that people invested. In order for something like that to happen now it would require complete incompetence on behalf of the reserve though.
I am having a difficult time believing that Hurd will ever amount to anything. If it is ever to gain a place as a widly used OS, it will have to have major advantages over linux. Linux is several years ahead of Hurd in both stability and features, and i see little reason to believe that this won't contiune. A new OS will only find success if it fills a void, and i see no void for it. Windows filled a void for a GUI for cheap hardware, BSD filled a void for an open sourced OS, and Linux filled one for an open source operating system. If Hurd has something that will make it much better than Linux, then it has a chance, but if not there will be no compelling reason to switch, and it will never be of any real use. I think that RMS and the rest of the FSF should put their egos aside and work on the development of the kernel that is stable and functional. If there is some major advantage to using hurd, please enlighten me.
Re:Some of these aren't so dumb!
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There is a defante difference between Canadians and Americans, however the culture is very similar. Although i would like to see a drop in the amount of Britney Spears, why not let us choose what music we listen to. The law is there to help canadian musicians, not to protect 'Canadian Culture', but i do not like my freedom to choose being taken away, and i think it sets a bad precident. I agree that these are of great benifit to Canadian artiest, but i do not like having to here Alanis Morriset 12 times a day. Most Canadian radio stations are really good to Canadian artists and would act in good faith with out having to repeat songs, there are 10 times the number of Americans.
As far as the turning on red lights, it is a hard hibit to break, and different from everywhere's else. As for Alberta dirvers, most are awful, we have one of the highest injury rates in Canada, and it's in the cities and major highways, it is so fustrating driving on a road where some jackass is going 10Km below the limit in the passing lane.
Re:Some of these aren't so dumb!
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In Canada, they listed "every fifth song on the radio must be by a canadian born person" as a dumb law. This law reflects the desire to remain seperate from the United States. It is a way of preserving Canadian identity. What's dumb about that?
I believe that this law has been changed since then, and it is now even higher. In Canada we call it Canadian content, and it does not have strong support from the people, especially in the west, where we feel that it takes away our freedom to choose what want to listen to or watch on tv. The CRTC, the regulatory body has a great deal of power, and makes it very difficult to get a tv station, even with only Canadian content. This law is dumb, but it is not near as bad as the laws in Quebec, which include the French sign law which require the French on any sign to be larger than the English. This is NOT cultral protection, but persicution of other cultures.
However after being to Quebec, the worst law is the no left turns on red, i did this right in front of a police car, but they were frienly and gave me a warning in perfect english. In my home province of Alberta, the best law is
If you are released from prison, it is required that you are given a handgun with bullets and a horse, so you can ride out of town.
The difference is that this law would not hold up, but the language and Canadian content laws will
The only time that the UN can ever interfere in a country is if there is a major violation of human rights, however this really does not interfere with the right to govern any more then not allowing me to kill someone interferes with my freedom. The ideal UN (as far as they're concencerned) is a body with complete political control. However nobody was willing to give this up, so they gave everybody complete sovernty.
This ideal will never work, as it is impossible to look out for everyone, just look at the Austrian and Ottoman empires. We must however ask how much power the UN should have.
Secondly, if you think that Hiroshima was as bad as the Holocaust then you must be insane. 12 million people were killed in the Holocaust, in a form of genocide, 80,000 were killed in Hiroshima, in what probably saving a 2-3 million on both sides of continued fighting. If you believe this is just propoganda, look at the casualties from the Japanese war, and consiter attacking the Japanese homeland, it would have been a long battle. The entire war horrific, Hiroshima was only a small part of it.
It is very difficult to 'tand in peaceful protest'. There is a reason that so many of these 'peaceful protests' turn violent, and it is not the police. Any time a large group of people gather in order to gain attention, many of them will not be peaceful, and will start causing problems, this will lead to mob mentality, and violence will happen. If anything, i feel sorry for the police and national gaurd who must go into the streets to retain order, so that innocent people will not get injured. I have as much right to walk down the street felling secure as they have to stand in peaceful protest.
For the Canadians out there, look at the 'peaceful' protest at the opec conferece, it sure didn;t look peaceful to me. However i do not believe what happened there was right, although the police did the right thing, it was the federal government mistake that led to it.
In a way this is true, however the issue of self governing vs. supranationalism is one that will have great importance in the next few years. The United Nations is currently not allowed to interfer in internal affairs, however many people believe the only way that the UN will ever be able to do anything is if they have this power. I agree that it is wrong to interfer with internal afairs, but this issue is not linited to the WTO, and a doubt that an incident like this would happen over the UN.
I honestly believe that most of the people here are just what i would call 'do gooders'. They want a fight (not usually physical), and they will fight for anything that the see as the 'good' thing, with little regard for what is right. I remeber from when i was in university this was common, and a doubt much has changed. A good example of this was a show i saw on tv about the tibet concerts. One of the people that was attending said 'I'm here to show my support to the tibeten(sp?) people, its really sad that their depressed'.
I hope nobody critized the mayor or the police for what they are doing, it is amazing what can happen when mob mentality takes over.
Anyway, i hope that there are few injuries on either side, and that the meeting can take place, and that people have a chance to aire their grevences in a rational environment, instead of on a street.
Very interesting, however i must point out that in every case that you mentioned of governments that turned the will of the people into something bad, of which I could name several more, including Nazi germany and pinochets(sp?) rule, were all radical regimes of which the United States is not. It is easy to complain about how slow your governmnet is, but it has maintained stability under uncertain conditions for over 200 years which is a very important accomplishment.
Or maybe it's an understanding of history. In this century more people have been killed by their own governments than by all wars combined.
I would really like to know one time in the history of you country, or mine for that matter, when large numbers of people have been killed by the government against the will of the people.
The only real time that I can think of would have been when the United States expanded west, but there was really no objection to it on a large scale, even though people knew about it. It would also be difficult to say that this was not a war, as the people they were fighting did not want to be part of the country. I have not studied American history to a great extent, but if it did happen, please enlighten me.
I do however still stand by my original point, and the fact that a democratic government is only a refection of the people who elect it.
It is amazing to me as a Canadian to look at Americans and see the total fear and distrust that you have for your government. In Canada, especilly out west, we dislike our government, and feel out of control, but we do not fear or distrust it.
Both governments have their flaws, but both are very democratic. If anything, the power that the Canadian federal government has over it citizans is more than that of its American counterpart. The American government is also better suited to avoid situations of abuse of power, while the Canadian system emphsises on speed.
This leads me to wonder why Americans fear their government so much. The only explanation that I can find on the side of the government is that, because of the size and power of the country, it has the potental to do so much. However i have difficulty believing that this is the cause.
This leads me to believe that it is not the government that causes this fear and distrust, but the overall attitude of the people. From a fairly liberal, outsider perspective, it would seem that the parinoia that Americans see, is not caused by abuses of the government, but by the fear of the people that they will happen.
If you look at your arguments, they have no reason. Why does the state want violence, why do they want to spy on you, why do they want a monopoly on this. when there are really, rational answers, then your idea may have grounds, but for now it's just heresay.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually after posting I read your post from yesterday and it was very insightful.
I was just letting off a bit of stream from some of the posts in this thread. I replyed to yours because I was bothered by you refering to those who respect the American founding fathers of the US as knuckleheads. Comparing the American revolution to the Bolshivik and French revolutions we will find that the American leaders were much more concerned with liberty and maintaining the goals then the other two. If one is to look into any hero they will see that they are not perfect, and this happened at a different time in history. A million wrongs will not tarnish a single right, and what the founding fathers did was great advancement for democracy and deserve to be respected for that.
I was not moderated up, my account default to 2 points, and I assure you that I am perfectly capable of reading english.
Well what about the reign of terror, Stalins purges, Hitlers concentration camps, the list goes on. Perhaps these 'knuckleheads' and 'nincompoop' know about these and realize that their country is not alone, and is one of the most important countries in the formation of modern democracy.
I live in Canada and looking back we have done sme awful thngs to our natives and to early Asian immigrants. Every country has these spots on their history, and their is not reason to continually blame them for them. Rational thinking will tell us that if we blame someone they will try and avoid speeking about it. This is not the way to prevent it from happening. Do you blame the current German government for the third reich? No, but we do remember it, and this is the same way that we must treat all the errors of our past.
Enlightenment, especially older verions have terrible focus behavior and defaults. I would recommend getting a new version of enlightenment and looking through focus settings. The sawfish window manager works better with gnome, though you will have to fix the focus settings also(very easy). I would recommend using helix gnome, it works very well and is far better out of the box than any other distribution. I think it can be used with any 6.x version of redhat, and apperently the rpm version is very easy to install.
This is an interesting view from their side of the story, and I am happy to see that it is personal, and not filtered through 10 different lawyers.
I have not been following this much, so this was the first statement that I have heard from them. It would be easy to dismiss this by saying that they don't understand napster or the technology, and because of this are making a mistake. This is not necessarily the case. The statistics that he provided we very sobering to the idea that napster helps both independent and major label artists (napster, not mp3). We must look at it from their side as well as our own, and understand that they feel threatened by napster, and when we feel threatened it is a natural reaction to fight. What tends to be ignored on slashdot is that they are legally just in what they are doing. It is their property and we must respect that.
On the other hand, I bought S&M after listening to mp3's of it, gotten from napster. I honestly think that what they are doing is not in their best interest and only time will tell. I also believe that any laws banning something like napster would set a dangerous precedent, akin to banning paint because people sniff it.
While do not doubt that guns are part of the problem in the US, there are many other factors. Social and economic differences, and racial relations being major concerns. There is no single problem that can differentiate the countries, but the mindset of the citizens must also be taken into account.
I am also Canadian, and if I'm not mistaken, the crimerate in Canada is about 1/10 of that in the US. While I agree that gun control can help stop crime, this has little to do with the differece in gun related deaths between the countries. We also must remember that Canada has not had a strong gun control system, and the one currently being implemented is still not as effective as it could be. A better comparison might be to a European country with a strict policy such as Britain.
I must be a hick because I'm from Alberta, and lean toward the Canadian right wing (which is really the center). Its a good thing our left wing government implemented a gun registration system that allows for unwarranted search and siege based on _seizure_ of unregistered guns.
Oh, and thank you for showing your superiority over us with generalizations and mistruths.
Yes, but the problem is the people, not the religion. The real problem with the christian relgion is that people have adapted and used it as an excuse to do bad things. Examples of this are nothern ireland over the past 30 years, and the southern US prior to the 70's (its still happening there, but it has gotten much better since then). Religion is something that each person has, and is molded around who they are.
What I am saying is while some people may use their religion for evil, most of us only use it for good.
I live in Calgary, Alberta. Within the last few days our city library board recently voted on content filtering for public libraries. When I first read about it i was concerned that it was happening, but after looking into it, the way it works should be pleasing to everyone but the two extremes.
It works such that everyone will have access to unrestricted content, however parents will be able to specify if their child should have the full access or the restricted access. It would also be possible for anyone to use the restricted access if they felt that the internet was to scary without it.
I understand that many people will see it as test prior to full scale blocking, however i have faith in the library board that they will not do this. The vote was eight in favor and two opposed, with one of the opposed saying that it was to restrictive, and the other(from a feminist group) saying it was not restrictive enough. This makes me believe that this is the way that it will stay.
Just for those that do not know, Calgary is a fairly wealthy city that is moderate to conservative, but we tend to be quite liberal when it comes to our rights. Our economy is still somewhat based on oil also have the highest number of university graduates per capita, if that means anything to you.
I personally would restrict my children's access, simply because of how easy it is to stumble across content that is not good for children(you know what I'm talking about), but when they are older i would remove it so that they will not have to deal with the stupidity of the companies that control the filtering. At home I do not use filtering, but instead supervision, it is far more effective than anything else, although it is not practical at a library.
your opinion is that of someone quite far left(strong socialist). From my view (centralist), while the US is right politically, there is little resistance to socialist ideals, besides dismissing them as ineffective. Communism is a very different matter, but i feel that this is rightfully so. While now is not the time to start a debate on communism, because communism is so far to the extreme the only way to maintain it is with a dictatorship. This leads to a situation much like that of fascism, which is treated very similar to communism in the US. This leads me to believe that the ideals of dictatorship are more of the concern to Americans, and not socialist politics.
I think that you are mistaking the strong corporate lobby in the US for the ideals of the citizens and leaders, although the leaders will do much for money (this is the biggest flaw in the country).
Well thank you for making your post intellegent, it makes it much easier to have a resonalble debate on an issue.
This one skill is not just valuable for writers, but for every single person. We tend to only limit our thoughts only to what we personally believe in, considering the rest as hearsay. By being able to actually see an issue from another viewpoint is what rational really is. I took a Political science course in University, and in it we were told to write an essay defending an opinion and one attacking the same opinion. In doing that i gained more insight than i ever would have only defending the position, and i urge everyone to try this before attacking someone else's opinion.
Every time i see a post such as yours it makes me cringe just a little. As a Canadian who has lived in both Britain and the United States, as well as several other countries, i think your eyes are so closed to what is around you that you cannot see the good in Americans. You present most americans as Ignorant to other's ideas. In doing this you are closing your eyes and ears, and become the ignorant one. I do not mean to insult you, only to point out something that i see far to often on slashdot.
Please don't flame me, but rational responses would be appreciated.
This would not de-Americanize the internet, but instead de-internationalize the internet, leaving it as only a shadow of what it is now. Three situations:
What if someone such as myself in Canada wanted to buy something off of an American site such as ebay. Unfortuatally i end up getting another site from Canada, perhapes the hbc online store. I want an ebay, not a department store. What if i wanted a site in France, but i didn't know it was in that country, what do i do now.
What if i am a company based in Canada, however i ship product anywhere. I now must register my name in every country, dealing with language bariers, stupid name server systems (your suggestion), and corrupt people wishing to charge me $20000 because my name is known in other counties. Now i am an international free software project, i hope i get a grant soon.
I am a well known Canadian company selling to the US and UK. Unfortuatally an enterprising person has registered my name in those country and has but up a porn site. When someone in that country tries to go to my site they are instead taken to a porn site. This looks bad.
The internet is international. It is also dominated by the US, but there are reasons for this, and if you don't like it, start your own network and only let those who are america-phobic on it. An international network is useful, but will be dominated by the countries with the largest population/use, this is true of everything.
Perhaps you should look into how to get a domain in Canada, and then look at the situation with the generic tlds, it really changes your outlook.
I hate the way that sun versions their product. SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 = Solaris 7
This becomes worse when you are also dealing with people running different verions of both Solaris and SunOS.
What seems to have happened with both MS and Sun is that the marketing people are now controlling the versions, not the developers.
Solaris 7 sounds (at least in their eyes) more mature than 2.7, and microsoft follows the same logic with with windows 2000 over NT 5.0.
I think that microsoft will stick with the year system at least until the two braches are merged, which was what was supposed to happen with 2000, oh well.
The cause of the great depression was not the federal reserve. It was the banks and the way that people invested. In order for something like that to happen now it would require complete incompetence on behalf of the reserve though.
This is somewhat true. DOS and Linux were very different, while Hurd and Linux are very similar.
Hurd is almost as old as linux, and i do not see it as being a replacement. The replacement will need to be a large leep, not a small step
I am having a difficult time believing that Hurd will ever amount to anything. If it is ever to gain a place as a widly used OS, it will have to have major advantages over linux. Linux is several years ahead of Hurd in both stability and features, and i see little reason to believe that this won't contiune. A new OS will only find success if it fills a void, and i see no void for it. Windows filled a void for a GUI for cheap hardware, BSD filled a void for an open sourced OS, and Linux filled one for an open source operating system. If Hurd has something that will make it much better than Linux, then it has a chance, but if not there will be no compelling reason to switch, and it will never be of any real use. I think that RMS and the rest of the FSF should put their egos aside and work on the development of the kernel that is stable and functional. If there is some major advantage to using hurd, please enlighten me.
There is a defante difference between Canadians and Americans, however the culture is very similar. Although i would like to see a drop in the amount of Britney Spears, why not let us choose what music we listen to. The law is there to help canadian musicians, not to protect 'Canadian Culture', but i do not like my freedom to choose being taken away, and i think it sets a bad precident. I agree that these are of great benifit to Canadian artiest, but i do not like having to here Alanis Morriset 12 times a day. Most Canadian radio stations are really good to Canadian artists and would act in good faith with out having to repeat songs, there are 10 times the number of Americans.
As far as the turning on red lights, it is a hard hibit to break, and different from everywhere's else. As for Alberta dirvers, most are awful, we have one of the highest injury rates in Canada, and it's in the cities and major highways, it is so fustrating driving on a road where some jackass is going 10Km below the limit in the passing lane.
I believe that this law has been changed since then, and it is now even higher. In Canada we call it Canadian content, and it does not have strong support from the people, especially in the west, where we feel that it takes away our freedom to choose what want to listen to or watch on tv. The CRTC, the regulatory body has a great deal of power, and makes it very difficult to get a tv station, even with only Canadian content. This law is dumb, but it is not near as bad as the laws in Quebec, which include the French sign law which require the French on any sign to be larger than the English. This is NOT cultral protection, but persicution of other cultures.
However after being to Quebec, the worst law is the no left turns on red, i did this right in front of a police car, but they were frienly and gave me a warning in perfect english. In my home province of Alberta, the best law is
The difference is that this law would not hold up, but the language and Canadian content laws willThe only time that the UN can ever interfere in a country is if there is a major violation of human rights, however this really does not interfere with the right to govern any more then not allowing me to kill someone interferes with my freedom. The ideal UN (as far as they're concencerned) is a body with complete political control. However nobody was willing to give this up, so they gave everybody complete sovernty.
This ideal will never work, as it is impossible to look out for everyone, just look at the Austrian and Ottoman empires. We must however ask how much power the UN should have.
Secondly, if you think that Hiroshima was as bad as the Holocaust then you must be insane. 12 million people were killed in the Holocaust, in a form of genocide, 80,000 were killed in Hiroshima, in what probably saving a 2-3 million on both sides of continued fighting. If you believe this is just propoganda, look at the casualties from the Japanese war, and consiter attacking the Japanese homeland, it would have been a long battle. The entire war horrific, Hiroshima was only a small part of it.
It is very difficult to 'tand in peaceful protest'. There is a reason that so many of these 'peaceful protests' turn violent, and it is not the police. Any time a large group of people gather in order to gain attention, many of them will not be peaceful, and will start causing problems, this will lead to mob mentality, and violence will happen. If anything, i feel sorry for the police and national gaurd who must go into the streets to retain order, so that innocent people will not get injured. I have as much right to walk down the street felling secure as they have to stand in peaceful protest.
For the Canadians out there, look at the 'peaceful' protest at the opec conferece, it sure didn;t look peaceful to me. However i do not believe what happened there was right, although the police did the right thing, it was the federal government mistake that led to it.
In a way this is true, however the issue of self governing vs. supranationalism is one that will have great importance in the next few years. The United Nations is currently not allowed to interfer in internal affairs, however many people believe the only way that the UN will ever be able to do anything is if they have this power. I agree that it is wrong to interfer with internal afairs, but this issue is not linited to the WTO, and a doubt that an incident like this would happen over the UN.
I honestly believe that most of the people here are just what i would call 'do gooders'. They want a fight (not usually physical), and they will fight for anything that the see as the 'good' thing, with little regard for what is right. I remeber from when i was in university this was common, and a doubt much has changed. A good example of this was a show i saw on tv about the tibet concerts. One of the people that was attending said 'I'm here to show my support to the tibeten(sp?) people, its really sad that their depressed'.
I hope nobody critized the mayor or the police for what they are doing, it is amazing what can happen when mob mentality takes over.
Anyway, i hope that there are few injuries on either side, and that the meeting can take place, and that people have a chance to aire their grevences in a rational environment, instead of on a street.
Very interesting, however i must point out that in every case that you mentioned of governments that turned the will of the people into something bad, of which I could name several more, including Nazi germany and pinochets(sp?) rule, were all radical regimes of which the United States is not. It is easy to complain about how slow your governmnet is, but it has maintained stability under uncertain conditions for over 200 years which is a very important accomplishment.
I would really like to know one time in the history of you country, or mine for that matter, when large numbers of people have been killed by the government against the will of the people.
The only real time that I can think of would have been when the United States expanded west, but there was really no objection to it on a large scale, even though people knew about it. It would also be difficult to say that this was not a war, as the people they were fighting did not want to be part of the country. I have not studied American history to a great extent, but if it did happen, please enlighten me.
I do however still stand by my original point, and the fact that a democratic government is only a refection of the people who elect it.
It is amazing to me as a Canadian to look at Americans and see the total fear and distrust that you have for your government. In Canada, especilly out west, we dislike our government, and feel out of control, but we do not fear or distrust it.
Both governments have their flaws, but both are very democratic. If anything, the power that the Canadian federal government has over it citizans is more than that of its American counterpart. The American government is also better suited to avoid situations of abuse of power, while the Canadian system emphsises on speed.
This leads me to wonder why Americans fear their government so much. The only explanation that I can find on the side of the government is that, because of the size and power of the country, it has the potental to do so much. However i have difficulty believing that this is the cause.
This leads me to believe that it is not the government that causes this fear and distrust, but the overall attitude of the people. From a fairly liberal, outsider perspective, it would seem that the parinoia that Americans see, is not caused by abuses of the government, but by the fear of the people that they will happen.
If you look at your arguments, they have no reason. Why does the state want violence, why do they want to spy on you, why do they want a monopoly on this. when there are really, rational answers, then your idea may have grounds, but for now it's just heresay.