heh, Europe and China need decades to catch up to the US's current level of military power and technology. And in those decades they spend trying to catch up with us, we will be a few decades ahead again.
Not really. By the looks of things, all that hi-tech, super-expensive to maintain US military gear will likely be soon on fire-sale for 1/10th the price. And most of it probably going to China as part of the restitution to America's largest creditor after USA goes under financially.
You see, you forgot that while USA does indeed have the most advanced army, more advanced the army, more it costs to run and maintain. The cost of USA's military is truly exorbitant (and I am not even counting the actual war expense of Iraq and Afganistan). Unfortunately your country is now a financial equivalent of the Titanic after it had its brush with a bit of ice. The orchestra is still playing vigorously but those who have a clue are edging towards lifeboats while greening sheepishly and sipping martinis to keep everyone else calm.
In an ochlocracy, the politicians need to tickle the needs of the unwashed crowds. Joe Sixpack and Ms Ten-Kids-And-Living-Off-Social-Welfare don't give a damn to IP laws. It's all about panem et circenses, no one cares about _you_.
However, once the politician in question won his seat, it's the time to reap his benefits. Usually, this means collecting the favours from his corporate friends, people who sponsored his campaign in the first place.
That is why I am beginning to think that an electoral system based on random selection (ala jury duty) is far more sane then the political-party / electioneering / fund-raising / influence-peddling crap we currently have. This would eliminate all political parties and put real, down-to-earth Canadians in positions of MPs rather then bred-for-power slimeball lawyers from political dynasties such as Martin.
That is good news indeed but the world population is still increasing rapidly and that is not so good news.
Can you give a possible mechanism for these "unimagineable long-term digestive and other diseases" that may come from monkeying around with protein chains? Last time I checked, proteins were broken down into amino acids during digestion, rendering their structure moot, so I assume you're talking about some weird chemical change in the plant itself---but what? And when does worrying about such far-off fears cross the line from prudence to paranoia?
Among many possibilities, are "faulty" proteins that are not processed properly by the digestive ammino acids and which then accumulate in the body. For example, many proteins have "left" and "right" mirror image structures, of which only one is biologically valid. While in nature these other forms occur very infrequently, by screwing around with genes we can easilly make these types of mutant proteins to appear. Many other similiar scenarios are possible, note also that not even the "normal" chains are all subject to digestion, that is why we dont digest ourselves from within and that is how ingested biological poisons work.
As you say, most libraries started out a either private club-like affairs, off-shoots of print-shops (similar to a modern blockbuster) or charitable foundations started by private citizens.
I wonder which of these categories the Great Library of Alexandria falls into...
Planet Earth to Sharp'r: there are things that pre-date the US of A and (oh the horror of it!) even Capitalism! I know, unbelievable, but true.
The concept of a library is linked to free dissemination of information, which scientists and scholars since times immemorial considered crucial for development of knowledge. The "for profit" part is a rather late addition of the Capitalist era. It worked so "well" that shortly after most governments realized that they'd better do something or soon they will find themselves with a population of uneducated farm hands and all scientists living aborad. Enter public and government-assisted university libraires.
Unfortunately, as of late, this seems to be more and more forgotten and it appears that we will have to re-learn the old lessons all over again... the hard way.
Government control and regulations, especially those regarding monopolies (establishing them, since big monopolies pretty much only happen and last when the government interferes to create them), securities regulation changes and credit/banking/monetary policies, are what caused the depression to start with. It was the first result of the U.S. Federal government deciding to really "control" the economy, and failed miserably.
Holy Cow! Where do you get such revisionist nonsense is beyond me. The stock market crash of 1929 occured at the apex of nearly unregulated laissez faire capitalist activity and its direct cause is widely attributed to excessive accumulation of wealth (due to its wildly uneven distribution and concentration), wild stock market speculation (read: unregulated con-artistry) and limited money supply (linked to the gold standard) among many many others, most related to haphazard and uncontrolled way in which world finances were developed. Among many obvious things far too numerous to point out is this glaring contradiction of your "government control" idea: the depression hit globally not just in the USA, even though foreign governments operated far different sets of rules, all having only one thing in common: worship of capital.
This is precious. Your belief in infallability of Capitalism and hate of government is so great that it has clearly approached a form of a religion. Facts seem to have no impact on this dogma. And it the best tradition of hate filled zealots you are atempting to paint the desperate measures of the government at that time (which by the way was then run by people of the same world view as yours) such as the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act (passed in 1930) as the cause of the crisis!
And as to monopolies, the government introduced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890... to break up monopolies which have already formed with no help whatsoever! To further expose your "argument" as the glorious illogic that it is, the enforcement of anti-tust laws sharply declined in 1920s in the period directly leading up to the depression, as the free-wheeling captalists of that time found more friendly Hoover administration in office! Which by the way led to monopolies and cartels and contributed to the "uneven distribution of wealth" above.
Amusing stuff, this. But this self-centered, greedy, narcisstic clownery of yours would be far more funny if it werent so dangerous to the society.
I realize that you don't really have any non-socialist political parties in Canada,
You should talk to Stockwell Day followers then, some of them make Ann Coulter sound commie red.
Did you even read the link I added where economists demonstrated that FDR's policies turned a short-term problem about to turn around into the Great Depression?
Yes I did and no, it was not "a short-term problem" to begin with. The stock market crash and the following pandemonium brought massive repercussions to the work force and inroduced the concept of mass starvation to the USA. I fully understand that the plight of your fellow citizens is of no concern to you as long as you get to somehow make money off of it, but the politicians of that time did not have that luxury.
And then to bellitle people like FDR who at least attempted to so something constructive for his country because he did not let citizens starve to death while "free market forces" run their course is plainly vicious.
If the USA collapses, it'll be because of socialist idiots who can't be bothered to learn history or basic economics, yet still think they should make all the decisions for everyone else.
Right. Because it was all those socialist idiots like FDR who caused the Great Depression, right? Oh wait...
Your cognitive dissonance is profoundly disturbing. Uncontrolled and unregulated Capitalism is what caused the catastrophy to begin with and now you turn around and blame those who tried to repair the damage for not re-applying more forcefully the same methods which lead to the disaster in the first place...
I believe one definition of insanity is "performing the same actions over and over and expecting a different result". Should FDR do what his predecessor did (i.e. be pro-capital, supply-side, against labour etc) he would have fullfilled this definiton. Luckilly for us (and to the amusement of some fringe economy "scholars" who practice voodoo and not science like all economists do) FDR did what he did. And the USA did recover and enjoyed a prolonged period of prosperity... until the supply-side cult had taken over again... and they are in the process of removing any last remaining vestiges of FDR's legacy... and yet, somehow, you say hello to $800 billion budget and astronomical trade deficits! And we up here in Canada, with our down-right pinko commie free to all medicare, old-age pentions and prevalent government regulation (not to mention sticky-fingered politicians) are having surpluses and somehow our economy is not doing any worse then yours, despite our having much larger tax burden. Go figure.
Or actually I will figure it for you: all advanced societies need some basic skeletal infrastructure to function, more advanced they get, more advanced this support structure needs to be. Thus the government gets to provide roads and police and basic necessities such as medical care and support of citizens in need such as that of an old and very young age. This includes basic education, because more educated the work force, more efficient (and profitable) the enterprises drawing from it will be. Then there is basic protections of citizens from predation by immoral individuals, be they muggers on the corner or silk-suited CEOs. Simple really. Its called civilization. Remove these fundamental protections and support and you got barbarism and law of the jungle. USA is already partially there, up to and including waging questionable wars for profit of some of its select priviledged citizens, which as history teaches (as much as we can trust it) is one of the crucial indicators present in past societies who also slid from greatness into barbarism.
Please kill yourself at the first available opportunity, then.
One reduces the population by controlling the birth rate, genius.
And I bet you're anti-war, too... Bit ironic, no?
Yes I am and no its not ironic even one bit. What is ironic is that you do not seem to fathom any other way of reducing world's population other then mass slaughter.
All technology we have today came about following that model, but we seem to survive.
At the cost of unspeakable misery and suffering, yes. Charles Dickens had a thing or two to say about this, read his books sometime. Look at the current state of Africa and see what western mega-farms did to it. Take a peek at the fun in Iraq and see what dependency on oil does to people. Etc. And so on. If I were to list all of the crap that this thinking produced, this post would be 1000 pages long.
The world is not so bad as you fear.
For some select (less sthen 5% of world's population, consuming 60% of world resources) lucky winners in this lottery, yes. For the rest of the planet, the thing frankly sucks.
Feel free to grow all the food you want without pesticide, there's a good market for that, but don't tell me that I can't eat GM food. I happen to like franekfood - especially if it's been irradiated. If it bothers you, don't eat it - more for me!
That is a reasonable position, albait not the one exhibited by most proponents of GM foods. You neglected to address the issue of what happens when the "designer" GM rice spreads and overtakes neighbouring fields, what happens when I have no choice because your garbage food is now irrevokably polluting all of the food chain, what happens when the corporate owners of this new cash cow demand and succeed in buying laws that ban proper labeling of foodstuffs (as it is being successfully done presently) to prevent populace from revolting? After all you must have a way to "choose" to eat GM foods or not, yes? Some apparently think you do not need that. Etc Etc. I do not worry about someone who chooses to make himself a guinea pig for corporate experiments in higher profit margins, that is your prerogative. But I am being given no choice, corporate ownership and consolidation of farmlands is increasing and the African nations are being victimized even further due to total blindness of technocrats as to social costs of their pet technologies. That is what I am objecting to.
Why is in-bred pesticide any different from sprayed-on pesticide in creating resistance? With either approach, you rotate pesticides each year to avoid resistance.
All pesticides suck because they introduce dangerous compounds into food chain. Their use is a direct result of drive for higher profit. Should safety of the food chain (as well as local employment) be the priority, pesticides would be used only in severe infestations as an emergency measure.
The prupose of any manufacturing technology is to allow the same work to be done with less people. Do you object to all technology?
The purpose of all technology is to improve lives of people. If some technology is used with reckless abandon and no foresight which then results in sufferring of people, that technology then missed its mark and is counter-productive. In your example, enhancing production efficiency while doing nothing about the displaced workers is detrimentary to society and thus counter-productive. Only ideological zealots would consider improving "efficiency" at all costs as something desirable. As I said, in their "ideal" society there is one person who owns the entire planet, all means of production are automated and everyone else is utterly unemployed. But the factories are efficient as hell... when they are running that is because noone can afford anything they make. Is such an absurd a place somewhere you would like to live? If no, then you must concede that "efficiency" is but one factor among many and other considerations take precedence.
Allowing the same amount of food to be grown on less land, thus slowing natural habitat destruction.
This is true and possibly the only benefit of GM crops. Unfortunately it pales in comparison to the actual problem: overpopulation. It is not the farming per-se that destroys land, it is the extraordinary over-population of the planet which then lays excessive demands on farm lands which causes all sorts of other evil. Reducing population and not making more on less is the answer. GMs will merely slow the process a bit, but by providing more food for a while will allow people to keep their heads in the sand about the root causes untill cannibalism will start being accepted social norm in some places and there is no trees left in others.
Making it possible to grow potatoes that are an edible Hepatitis B vaccine, and others are on the way.
An ability which is not only vastly offset by potential dangers of screwing around with protein chains in food and thus causing all sorts of unimagineable long-term digestive and other diseases, it is also totally impractical since the vaccines are variable based on strains of the virii/bacteria they are aimed at. Strains which evolve at immense speed.
Increasing local crop yield in developing countries that can't count on foreign crops to get to them.
Which is a lie since no sane country will buy an intellectual-property encumbered crop which is designed to crap-out unless watered with Roundup or some other patented chemical which has to be imported at the cost of 1/2 of the country's GDP. Not to mention should the seed spread somewhere else, Monsanto will end up owning the country outright.
This is of course an aside to the real problem, which is lack of employmemt in the said countries and the fact that local farming has been destroyed thoroughly by the western "charity" of mega-uber-farms sending their impossible to beat on price crops overseas. Should local "inefficient" farming still exist and foreign crops banned, most of the African countries would be self-sufficient food and work wise.
This list sounds like something fresh out of corporate propaganda brochure.
And now for some reality checks:
Introducing natural pesticides that eliminate or reduce the use of man-made chemicals that injure both the environment and the health of the people consuming the food while lowering the cost of the food
Which promptly leads to resistance of the pests to the natural pesticide because it is a monoculture, widely used formula. And pests do evolve. Fast. That is why we have such new wonders as antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But, by all means do fuck with natural balances of things some more. It is not like the farmers of old had any idea what to do! With crop rotations and what not, no?
Making crops more hardy, avoiding massive price spikes (and thus dietary swings for the poor), when weather or disease wipe out a crop.
At the small expense of having no fucking clue about long-term impact of the altered protein combinations in the said food on humans. Stuff that will show up after 10 years of consumption when it will be too late to do anything about it. But then again corporations would never allow something as immediate profit to get in the way of future food chain safety, would they?
Eliminating the need to selectively breed for survivability in cold storage, thus putting the selective breeding weight back on things like taste
This really goes with the next one..
Increasing shelf-life, and therefore the range at which food can be reasonably delivered (this directly impacts the price of food in the third world, as getting food in place before it rots is a huge cost).
In other words to make the fucking mass-produced food in mega-uber-farms be more "economically" viable for long-range transport. Which means that a) fewer people are working at these farms. b) they are all located in top industrialized countires and the food is delivered to the third world which is given no chances to produce its own. c) the entire process, including manufacture of pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and looong-range transportation consumers inordinate amounts of energy, crude oil particularly. And d) the entire scenario serves to destroy small, inneficient but local farms which end up employing and providing livelyhood for 100-fold more people and do so without dependence on some world agricultural, chemical, genetic-fuckup, intellectual-property and your-black-african-ass-owning superpower. It is hopelessly lost on most technology zealots that maximum "efficiency" means one owner, full automation and zero employees. And 99% unemployment.
Providing nutrients (e.g. iodine) which people in certain parts of the world tend to suffer from the lack of.
The reason they do not have enough iodine and all sorts of other nutrients is because they do not have work and thus cannot afford any other food but the handouts... which merely keep them alive in utter misery. GM foods only address the problem cosmetically over there while rake in profits and strengthen the status quo over here.
If you have any more "benefits" of GM foods in mind, let me know.
"yeah well call me when it's actually "good enough""
Well, apparently he is a better salesman then you give him credit for.... that and the small fact that the Bitmover did not expand until the product was already in use by Linus to some degree (Linus used various incremental versions of BK just by himself for a while before he officially made others use it).
Hmm, here's a reference. A bit dated, admitedly, but still relevant. 80 weeks wait for a tonsillectomy is never acceptable.
Why dont you link straight to the Free Republic? Same lies but at least amusingly told and sprinkled with a generous dose of spittle from the foaming mouths. For your information: the fact that some idiot on some wingnut site posts a number pulled out of some other (Canadian) wingnut's ass does not make it true. Fraser Institute, give me a break, why dont you ask the shareholders in insurance companies directly for their ideas how to make more profit, instead of their proxy? There is no queue 80 weeks long in Canada for any procedure save transplants. If you want to prove otherwise, link to the Canadian Health Institute or some other sane and professional group without an outrageous, greed motivated agenda. Then I will concede.
Your ad-hominem attacks are typical of most modern liberals.
Pereheaps we just got fed up with modern wingnuts who can be trusted to tell lies, only lies and nothing but lies as soon as their yappers are opened.
No. He was never put on any list. The surgery was denied because it was not done in Canada.
Your lies and bullshit are beginning to annoy me. Even hernia repair is covered as an elective procedure and performed frequently at the Jean-Talon Hospital in Montreal for example (I checked with the Québec Health Insurance, you fucking liar). Go spin your crap somewhere else.
And, currently, the wait is 80 weeks for a tonsillectomy in Canada.
Another elective procedure an no its 60 days at most. Your delusions are getting really grand now, 80 weeks is 1 and 1/2 years. I wonder if you find many Libertarians to con with this outlandish drivel. What a stupid, brazen liar you are.
Last I heard about hip replacements, the wait was seven years, though that may have changed, and it varies from province to province. My father in law is on an 18 month waiting list for a hammer toe in New Brunswick.
Oh yea! And the waiting list for a broken toe is 125 years and 32 weeks. And it was your sister's nephew's second cousin twice removed that had that self-combusting pinkie they refused to cover too!
You are a pathetic, obsessive, habitual liar. Stop inventing incredible and oh-so-uncovered by Canada and so-miraculously-cured-in-a-flash-in-the-USA aliments for your imaginary family members and go get mental help.
At the time, there was no nationalized health care... 1961
Yes, yes, how convenient, just before the Unviversal Medicare was enacted! Who would have guessed?! Given all your other baldfaced lies, this timing of your imaginary events it is no suprise.
You credibility at this point is zero and I am no longer going to humour your mental disorder. Get help and stop bothering people with this nonsense.
...Access to dachas and holiday resorts, unlimited bank accounts, were able to shop at well-stocked stores, and were allowed to travel abroad and send their children to the best universities.
And now they can do all this and on top of that they own all of the country's natural resources outright. Except that now they live in palaces and the "dachas" grew to be private islands. While true, the average citizen's shopping abilities did improve immensly, his abysmal purchasing power makes that nearly irrelevant. You should read up some on the current state of the economies of the countries of the former Eastern block. An aye opener that is.
Compare the way the planes run in capitalist nations with the way planes run in communist nations. In capitalist places, planes run on schedules, and anyone can fly. In communist nations, the planes function as taxis at the whim of the nomenclature, unavailable to non party members.
Riiight. That is why Areoflot and Polish Arlines only trasported party officials and had no scheduled flights, right? I have no clue where do you get such nonsense.
Russia is still a substantially socialist nation, but without the terror and mass-murder. That people are still in shoddy 2-room concrete block apartments reflects badly on socialism, not capitalism.
Really? So that is why various private industrialists own most of its oil and gas reserves and industry. Some socialism. The term you are groping for is "crony capitalism".
Wrong.
Oh, how enlightening and comprehensively detailed rebuttals you are capable of! By all means, be some more arrogantly dismissive!
Wrong. "Big business" is subservient to the State, with nominally private ownership in the means of production being only a formality.
Sigh. You are insane. If any of this drivel were true, Krupp and others great German industrialists would not be such staunch supporters of Hitler. But they were.
You are mad
No I am merely, unlike you, a memeber of the reality based crowd. Which I can understand, from your position must seem quite surreal and incomprehensible.
The AAA was not caused as a result of the hernia repair. It was discovered during the hernia repair. He survived the hernia repair just fine.
So you are trying to tell me that the evil doctors conspired not to perform the surgery by putting your father on a waiting list four years long? There never was a list that long for any "routine" procedure in the whole country. The most notorious, non-critical, elective hip replacements and the like take 3 months.
I call royal, stinking, heap of sanctimonious, ulterior motive, ideological bullshit. Your fabrications are getting beyond incredulous and into the realm of insulting people's intelligence.
It was speculated that the AAA began some 30 years earlier when he underwent surgery to remove kidney stones: the tugging on the renal artery weakening the wall of the aorta.
Right. So your father had other surgeries earlier and took advantage of the system throughout his life. There goes the "argument" of yours about not getting back what he paid in. In fact this makes you nothing but the troll some others on this thread already pointed out based on your past history of fabrications and mis-statements.
There's a lot of favoratism that goes on with those that are stuck on the dreaded "list".
As soon as you produce any evidence of it, it will be on the front pages of any paper in Canada. Oh wait, you do not have any shred of evidence for it.... other then the "commies (and now apparently the affluent too) are out to get me!" paranoia of yours.
It was detected during a hernia repair surgery at a private clinic. (Apparantly, hernia repair is not a covered procedurre).
Some hernia surgery is considered elective world-wide. Canadian system covers the emergent inguinal hernia repair (i.e. non-elective one).
He was refused treatment because "there is no doctor in Canada that can do this" and "it is too expensive to send you to the U.S."
I call bullshit. The hernia procedure, being elective might have been not covered, but even if the private clinic fucked up (mortality of hernia repair is quite high at the old age your father must have been) the medicare would have and should have covered subsequent life-threatening complications. Specially over a period of four years. There is not a waiting line that long in Canada for any procedure (save perheaps transplants which are dependent on donors).
He certainly didn't have the financial resources to sue.
I hear we have "loser pays court costs" system here.. maybe that had something to do with it.
Apparently, his situation is becoming increasingly common.
Says you.
The fact remains that if he could purchase health insurance on a free market, there would be no issue of getting treatment.
Riiight. A US HMO would spring for elective and risky procedures happily and cheerfully!
"Corporate wealth" has nothing to do with fascism.
Sure, that is why Krupp and others never sponsored and supported Hitler.. oh wait.
The only "financial elite" was the State, as all industry was required to be subservient to the State.
And the "state" was defined as... the elite with the Leader and his merry crew at the helm. All large non-Jewish German corporations were granted unprecedented powers over their workers... and their owners and the Leader formed a mutual-admiration society. You can produce as many abstract "definitions" as you wish, the fact remains that is what occured. No to mention the profits they all raked in during the Nazi militarization program.
This is beyond mental retardation.
I couldn't describe your delusions any better myself.
This is a real definition of fascism that was not invented by some communist lunatic:
Then google some more, you will find that this is just one of many complimentary definitions, this particular one focuses only one one aspect of the system (i.e. the authority and control). Next you are going to tell me that because fascists universally claimed to be "socialist" they granted powers to the workers...
The so-called "inequality" in capitalist nations is nothing compared to the real and brutal inequalities in places like Cuba and North Korea.
Actually not quite. In places like USSR, Poland, Chechoslovakia etc, the disparity was that of a 2-room apartament of a citizen versus a small house in the woods of the top party official. One glance at the mansions and holdings of some of the Russian CEO's today and the still 2-room apartament of the average worker should dispell that ludicrous notion. The evil in the USSR's rendition of Communism was not disparity of wealth but disparity of power, and abuse of thereof.
Yes, fascism is a form of socialism, and therefore, exhibits much of the same inequities that we saw under communism.
No. In Fascism the word "socialism" is a misnomer. The definition of fascism is a collusion of big business and state.
Oh, I see. You are somehow equating relative freedom with "fascism".
Libertarianism has just as much "freedom" in it for the average, not super-wealthy person in it as fascism has "socialism".
A governmental system in which the State, usually under the direction of one or a small group of individuals, holds absolute power, usually over political decisions, and often over the economic means of production and distribution as well.
That is not the definition of fascism. Fascism is a system characterized by collusion of wealth (particularly coprorate wealth) and the State while coupled with authoritarian government and personality cult of the Leader. All of which results in a supreme, unchecked power of a clique of a financial elite (although, ironically, in most known fascisct societies the control soon spiralled out of the hands of the industrialist manipulators and into the hands of increasingly insane Leader). The critical point to remember: contrary to its name ("national socialist workers party") the sytem was a concotion by the very rich for the benefit of the very rich, granting them nearly absolute powers over everyone else.
A governmental system in which the State is reduced to its basic functions of protecting the people under its oversight from other people, and enforcing contracts.
The con is in the term "basic" function, just as the con is in the term "socialist" in fascism. According to most advocates of Libertarianism I run into, roads and police are not included (as they believe in 0% taxation). Subsequently I can only imagine a set of private armies defending holdings of tax-free warlords.
How, exactly, are these two comparable again?
In both there is no effort to protect those at the bottom of the society from the ones at the top. Both are attempts to enable the very wealthy to acquire near absolute power under the disguise of some ideology, "socialism" in the case of fascism and "freedom from taxation" in the case of Libertarianism.
So why isn't there a doctor to do it? Oh, because the various Conservative provincial governments and the Liberals in the Federal government have slashed funding for our healthcare system for more than 15 years.
Your analysis is right on the money. I will add this to my assortment of clubs to beat the nutcases with.
Please note however that even with the shortage of staff our medical system will still try to help. Something like 1800 Ontarians were sent abroad in 2000 for advanced cancer therapy procedures. This is why I find it highly suspicious that this "routine" procedure of his was somehow maliciously denied... and if I sense the vibe he is sending correctly... by some sneering members of a vast left-wing conspiracy who wore Che Guevarra and Lenin pins while at it.
Note that this doesn't contradict that Linus helped Larry on BK well before that time - but it is the reputation of BK being "used by Linus", not that "Linus helped the people writing it" that is being claimed as valuable payback.
Not so. Larry was making as much noise about his co-laboration with Linus everywhere he could as loud as he could. Why, he was trumpeting it back in 1997. It was his major marketing device in various conferences I am familiar with.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. By the looks of things, all that hi-tech, super-expensive to maintain US military gear will likely be soon on fire-sale for 1/10th the price. And most of it probably going to China as part of the restitution to America's largest creditor after USA goes under financially.
You see, you forgot that while USA does indeed have the most advanced army, more advanced the army, more it costs to run and maintain. The cost of USA's military is truly exorbitant (and I am not even counting the actual war expense of Iraq and Afganistan). Unfortunately your country is now a financial equivalent of the Titanic after it had its brush with a bit of ice. The orchestra is still playing vigorously but those who have a clue are edging towards lifeboats while greening sheepishly and sipping martinis to keep everyone else calm.
However, once the politician in question won his seat, it's the time to reap his benefits. Usually, this means collecting the favours from his corporate friends, people who sponsored his campaign in the first place.
That is why I am beginning to think that an electoral system based on random selection (ala jury duty) is far more sane then the political-party / electioneering / fund-raising / influence-peddling crap we currently have. This would eliminate all political parties and put real, down-to-earth Canadians in positions of MPs rather then bred-for-power slimeball lawyers from political dynasties such as Martin.
Oops, that should read: "processed properly by the digestive enzymes"
That is good news indeed but the world population is still increasing rapidly and that is not so good news.
Can you give a possible mechanism for these "unimagineable long-term digestive and other diseases" that may come from monkeying around with protein chains? Last time I checked, proteins were broken down into amino acids during digestion, rendering their structure moot, so I assume you're talking about some weird chemical change in the plant itself---but what? And when does worrying about such far-off fears cross the line from prudence to paranoia?
Among many possibilities, are "faulty" proteins that are not processed properly by the digestive ammino acids and which then accumulate in the body. For example, many proteins have "left" and "right" mirror image structures, of which only one is biologically valid. While in nature these other forms occur very infrequently, by screwing around with genes we can easilly make these types of mutant proteins to appear. Many other similiar scenarios are possible, note also that not even the "normal" chains are all subject to digestion, that is why we dont digest ourselves from within and that is how ingested biological poisons work.
Right, that is why the Earth population is declining... oh, wait..
I wonder which of these categories the Great Library of Alexandria falls into...
Planet Earth to Sharp'r: there are things that pre-date the US of A and (oh the horror of it!) even Capitalism! I know, unbelievable, but true.
The concept of a library is linked to free dissemination of information, which scientists and scholars since times immemorial considered crucial for development of knowledge. The "for profit" part is a rather late addition of the Capitalist era. It worked so "well" that shortly after most governments realized that they'd better do something or soon they will find themselves with a population of uneducated farm hands and all scientists living aborad. Enter public and government-assisted university libraires.
Unfortunately, as of late, this seems to be more and more forgotten and it appears that we will have to re-learn the old lessons all over again ... the hard way.
Holy Cow! Where do you get such revisionist nonsense is beyond me. The stock market crash of 1929 occured at the apex of nearly unregulated laissez faire capitalist activity and its direct cause is widely attributed to excessive accumulation of wealth (due to its wildly uneven distribution and concentration), wild stock market speculation (read: unregulated con-artistry) and limited money supply (linked to the gold standard) among many many others, most related to haphazard and uncontrolled way in which world finances were developed. Among many obvious things far too numerous to point out is this glaring contradiction of your "government control" idea: the depression hit globally not just in the USA, even though foreign governments operated far different sets of rules, all having only one thing in common: worship of capital.
This is precious. Your belief in infallability of Capitalism and hate of government is so great that it has clearly approached a form of a religion. Facts seem to have no impact on this dogma. And it the best tradition of hate filled zealots you are atempting to paint the desperate measures of the government at that time (which by the way was then run by people of the same world view as yours) such as the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act (passed in 1930) as the cause of the crisis!
And as to monopolies, the government introduced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 ... to break up monopolies which have already formed with no help whatsoever! To further expose your "argument" as the glorious illogic that it is, the enforcement of anti-tust laws sharply declined in 1920s in the period directly leading up to the depression, as the free-wheeling captalists of that time found more friendly Hoover administration in office! Which by the way led to monopolies and cartels and contributed to the "uneven distribution of wealth" above.
Amusing stuff, this. But this self-centered, greedy, narcisstic clownery of yours would be far more funny if it werent so dangerous to the society.
I realize that you don't really have any non-socialist political parties in Canada,
You should talk to Stockwell Day followers then, some of them make Ann Coulter sound commie red.
Did you even read the link I added where economists demonstrated that FDR's policies turned a short-term problem about to turn around into the Great Depression?
Yes I did and no, it was not "a short-term problem" to begin with. The stock market crash and the following pandemonium brought massive repercussions to the work force and inroduced the concept of mass starvation to the USA. I fully understand that the plight of your fellow citizens is of no concern to you as long as you get to somehow make money off of it, but the politicians of that time did not have that luxury.
And then to bellitle people like FDR who at least attempted to so something constructive for his country because he did not let citizens starve to death while "free market forces" run their course is plainly vicious.
Right. Because it was all those socialist idiots like FDR who caused the Great Depression, right? Oh wait...
Your cognitive dissonance is profoundly disturbing. Uncontrolled and unregulated Capitalism is what caused the catastrophy to begin with and now you turn around and blame those who tried to repair the damage for not re-applying more forcefully the same methods which lead to the disaster in the first place...
I believe one definition of insanity is "performing the same actions over and over and expecting a different result". Should FDR do what his predecessor did (i.e. be pro-capital, supply-side, against labour etc) he would have fullfilled this definiton. Luckilly for us (and to the amusement of some fringe economy "scholars" who practice voodoo and not science like all economists do) FDR did what he did. And the USA did recover and enjoyed a prolonged period of prosperity ... until the supply-side cult had taken over again ... and they are in the process of removing any last remaining vestiges of FDR's legacy ... and yet, somehow, you say hello to $800 billion budget and astronomical trade deficits! And we up here in Canada, with our down-right pinko commie free to all medicare, old-age pentions and prevalent government regulation (not to mention sticky-fingered politicians) are having surpluses and somehow our economy is not doing any worse then yours, despite our having much larger tax burden. Go figure.
Or actually I will figure it for you: all advanced societies need some basic skeletal infrastructure to function, more advanced they get, more advanced this support structure needs to be. Thus the government gets to provide roads and police and basic necessities such as medical care and support of citizens in need such as that of an old and very young age. This includes basic education, because more educated the work force, more efficient (and profitable) the enterprises drawing from it will be. Then there is basic protections of citizens from predation by immoral individuals, be they muggers on the corner or silk-suited CEOs. Simple really. Its called civilization. Remove these fundamental protections and support and you got barbarism and law of the jungle. USA is already partially there, up to and including waging questionable wars for profit of some of its select priviledged citizens, which as history teaches (as much as we can trust it) is one of the crucial indicators present in past societies who also slid from greatness into barbarism.
One reduces the population by controlling the birth rate, genius.
And I bet you're anti-war, too... Bit ironic, no?
Yes I am and no its not ironic even one bit. What is ironic is that you do not seem to fathom any other way of reducing world's population other then mass slaughter.
At the cost of unspeakable misery and suffering, yes. Charles Dickens had a thing or two to say about this, read his books sometime. Look at the current state of Africa and see what western mega-farms did to it. Take a peek at the fun in Iraq and see what dependency on oil does to people. Etc. And so on. If I were to list all of the crap that this thinking produced, this post would be 1000 pages long.
The world is not so bad as you fear.
For some select (less sthen 5% of world's population, consuming 60% of world resources) lucky winners in this lottery, yes. For the rest of the planet, the thing frankly sucks.
Feel free to grow all the food you want without pesticide, there's a good market for that, but don't tell me that I can't eat GM food. I happen to like franekfood - especially if it's been irradiated. If it bothers you, don't eat it - more for me!
That is a reasonable position, albait not the one exhibited by most proponents of GM foods. You neglected to address the issue of what happens when the "designer" GM rice spreads and overtakes neighbouring fields, what happens when I have no choice because your garbage food is now irrevokably polluting all of the food chain, what happens when the corporate owners of this new cash cow demand and succeed in buying laws that ban proper labeling of foodstuffs (as it is being successfully done presently) to prevent populace from revolting? After all you must have a way to "choose" to eat GM foods or not, yes? Some apparently think you do not need that. Etc Etc. I do not worry about someone who chooses to make himself a guinea pig for corporate experiments in higher profit margins, that is your prerogative. But I am being given no choice, corporate ownership and consolidation of farmlands is increasing and the African nations are being victimized even further due to total blindness of technocrats as to social costs of their pet technologies. That is what I am objecting to.
All pesticides suck because they introduce dangerous compounds into food chain. Their use is a direct result of drive for higher profit. Should safety of the food chain (as well as local employment) be the priority, pesticides would be used only in severe infestations as an emergency measure.
The prupose of any manufacturing technology is to allow the same work to be done with less people. Do you object to all technology?
The purpose of all technology is to improve lives of people. If some technology is used with reckless abandon and no foresight which then results in sufferring of people, that technology then missed its mark and is counter-productive. In your example, enhancing production efficiency while doing nothing about the displaced workers is detrimentary to society and thus counter-productive. Only ideological zealots would consider improving "efficiency" at all costs as something desirable. As I said, in their "ideal" society there is one person who owns the entire planet, all means of production are automated and everyone else is utterly unemployed. But the factories are efficient as hell ... when they are running that is because noone can afford anything they make. Is such an absurd a place somewhere you would like to live? If no, then you must concede that "efficiency" is but one factor among many and other considerations take precedence.
Allowing the same amount of food to be grown on less land, thus slowing natural habitat destruction.
This is true and possibly the only benefit of GM crops. Unfortunately it pales in comparison to the actual problem: overpopulation. It is not the farming per-se that destroys land, it is the extraordinary over-population of the planet which then lays excessive demands on farm lands which causes all sorts of other evil. Reducing population and not making more on less is the answer. GMs will merely slow the process a bit, but by providing more food for a while will allow people to keep their heads in the sand about the root causes untill cannibalism will start being accepted social norm in some places and there is no trees left in others.
Making it possible to grow potatoes that are an edible Hepatitis B vaccine, and others are on the way.
An ability which is not only vastly offset by potential dangers of screwing around with protein chains in food and thus causing all sorts of unimagineable long-term digestive and other diseases, it is also totally impractical since the vaccines are variable based on strains of the virii/bacteria they are aimed at. Strains which evolve at immense speed.
Increasing local crop yield in developing countries that can't count on foreign crops to get to them.
Which is a lie since no sane country will buy an intellectual-property encumbered crop which is designed to crap-out unless watered with Roundup or some other patented chemical which has to be imported at the cost of 1/2 of the country's GDP. Not to mention should the seed spread somewhere else, Monsanto will end up owning the country outright.
This is of course an aside to the real problem, which is lack of employmemt in the said countries and the fact that local farming has been destroyed thoroughly by the western "charity" of mega-uber-farms sending their impossible to beat on price crops overseas. Should local "inefficient" farming still exist and foreign crops banned, most of the African countries would be self-sufficient food and work wise.
And now for some reality checks:
Introducing natural pesticides that eliminate or reduce the use of man-made chemicals that injure both the environment and the health of the people consuming the food while lowering the cost of the food
Which promptly leads to resistance of the pests to the natural pesticide because it is a monoculture, widely used formula. And pests do evolve. Fast. That is why we have such new wonders as antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But, by all means do fuck with natural balances of things some more. It is not like the farmers of old had any idea what to do! With crop rotations and what not, no?
Making crops more hardy, avoiding massive price spikes (and thus dietary swings for the poor), when weather or disease wipe out a crop.
At the small expense of having no fucking clue about long-term impact of the altered protein combinations in the said food on humans. Stuff that will show up after 10 years of consumption when it will be too late to do anything about it. But then again corporations would never allow something as immediate profit to get in the way of future food chain safety, would they?
Eliminating the need to selectively breed for survivability in cold storage, thus putting the selective breeding weight back on things like taste
This really goes with the next one..
Increasing shelf-life, and therefore the range at which food can be reasonably delivered (this directly impacts the price of food in the third world, as getting food in place before it rots is a huge cost).
In other words to make the fucking mass-produced food in mega-uber-farms be more "economically" viable for long-range transport. Which means that a) fewer people are working at these farms. b) they are all located in top industrialized countires and the food is delivered to the third world which is given no chances to produce its own. c) the entire process, including manufacture of pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and looong-range transportation consumers inordinate amounts of energy, crude oil particularly. And d) the entire scenario serves to destroy small, inneficient but local farms which end up employing and providing livelyhood for 100-fold more people and do so without dependence on some world agricultural, chemical, genetic-fuckup, intellectual-property and your-black-african-ass-owning superpower. It is hopelessly lost on most technology zealots that maximum "efficiency" means one owner, full automation and zero employees. And 99% unemployment.
Providing nutrients (e.g. iodine) which people in certain parts of the world tend to suffer from the lack of.
The reason they do not have enough iodine and all sorts of other nutrients is because they do not have work and thus cannot afford any other food but the handouts... which merely keep them alive in utter misery. GM foods only address the problem cosmetically over there while rake in profits and strengthen the status quo over here.
If you have any more "benefits" of GM foods in mind, let me know.
Well, apparently he is a better salesman then you give him credit for .... that and the small fact that the Bitmover did not expand until the product was already in use by Linus to some degree (Linus used various incremental versions of BK just by himself for a while before he officially made others use it).
Why dont you link straight to the Free Republic? Same lies but at least amusingly told and sprinkled with a generous dose of spittle from the foaming mouths. For your information: the fact that some idiot on some wingnut site posts a number pulled out of some other (Canadian) wingnut's ass does not make it true. Fraser Institute, give me a break, why dont you ask the shareholders in insurance companies directly for their ideas how to make more profit, instead of their proxy? There is no queue 80 weeks long in Canada for any procedure save transplants. If you want to prove otherwise, link to the Canadian Health Institute or some other sane and professional group without an outrageous, greed motivated agenda. Then I will concede.
Your ad-hominem attacks are typical of most modern liberals.
Pereheaps we just got fed up with modern wingnuts who can be trusted to tell lies, only lies and nothing but lies as soon as their yappers are opened.
You just can't bear the truth.
No I just cant bear idiotic trolls. Be gone.
Your lies and bullshit are beginning to annoy me. Even hernia repair is covered as an elective procedure and performed frequently at the Jean-Talon Hospital in Montreal for example (I checked with the Québec Health Insurance, you fucking liar). Go spin your crap somewhere else.
And, currently, the wait is 80 weeks for a tonsillectomy in Canada.
Another elective procedure an no its 60 days at most. Your delusions are getting really grand now, 80 weeks is 1 and 1/2 years. I wonder if you find many Libertarians to con with this outlandish drivel. What a stupid, brazen liar you are.
Last I heard about hip replacements, the wait was seven years, though that may have changed, and it varies from province to province. My father in law is on an 18 month waiting list for a hammer toe in New Brunswick.
Oh yea! And the waiting list for a broken toe is 125 years and 32 weeks. And it was your sister's nephew's second cousin twice removed that had that self-combusting pinkie they refused to cover too!
You are a pathetic, obsessive, habitual liar. Stop inventing incredible and oh-so-uncovered by Canada and so-miraculously-cured-in-a-flash-in-the-USA aliments for your imaginary family members and go get mental help.
At the time, there was no nationalized health care ... 1961
Yes, yes, how convenient, just before the Unviversal Medicare was enacted! Who would have guessed?! Given all your other baldfaced lies, this timing of your imaginary events it is no suprise.
You credibility at this point is zero and I am no longer going to humour your mental disorder. Get help and stop bothering people with this nonsense.
And now they can do all this and on top of that they own all of the country's natural resources outright. Except that now they live in palaces and the "dachas" grew to be private islands. While true, the average citizen's shopping abilities did improve immensly, his abysmal purchasing power makes that nearly irrelevant. You should read up some on the current state of the economies of the countries of the former Eastern block. An aye opener that is.
Compare the way the planes run in capitalist nations with the way planes run in communist nations. In capitalist places, planes run on schedules, and anyone can fly. In communist nations, the planes function as taxis at the whim of the nomenclature, unavailable to non party members.
Riiight. That is why Areoflot and Polish Arlines only trasported party officials and had no scheduled flights, right? I have no clue where do you get such nonsense.
Russia is still a substantially socialist nation, but without the terror and mass-murder. That people are still in shoddy 2-room concrete block apartments reflects badly on socialism, not capitalism.
Really? So that is why various private industrialists own most of its oil and gas reserves and industry. Some socialism. The term you are groping for is "crony capitalism".
Wrong.
Oh, how enlightening and comprehensively detailed rebuttals you are capable of! By all means, be some more arrogantly dismissive!
Wrong. "Big business" is subservient to the State, with nominally private ownership in the means of production being only a formality.
Sigh. You are insane. If any of this drivel were true, Krupp and others great German industrialists would not be such staunch supporters of Hitler. But they were.
You are mad
No I am merely, unlike you, a memeber of the reality based crowd. Which I can understand, from your position must seem quite surreal and incomprehensible.
So you are trying to tell me that the evil doctors conspired not to perform the surgery by putting your father on a waiting list four years long? There never was a list that long for any "routine" procedure in the whole country. The most notorious, non-critical, elective hip replacements and the like take 3 months.
I call royal, stinking, heap of sanctimonious, ulterior motive, ideological bullshit. Your fabrications are getting beyond incredulous and into the realm of insulting people's intelligence.
It was speculated that the AAA began some 30 years earlier when he underwent surgery to remove kidney stones: the tugging on the renal artery weakening the wall of the aorta.
Right. So your father had other surgeries earlier and took advantage of the system throughout his life. There goes the "argument" of yours about not getting back what he paid in. In fact this makes you nothing but the troll some others on this thread already pointed out based on your past history of fabrications and mis-statements.
As soon as you produce any evidence of it, it will be on the front pages of any paper in Canada. Oh wait, you do not have any shred of evidence for it.... other then the "commies (and now apparently the affluent too) are out to get me!" paranoia of yours.
Some hernia surgery is considered elective world-wide. Canadian system covers the emergent inguinal hernia repair (i.e. non-elective one).
He was refused treatment because "there is no doctor in Canada that can do this" and "it is too expensive to send you to the U.S."
I call bullshit. The hernia procedure, being elective might have been not covered, but even if the private clinic fucked up (mortality of hernia repair is quite high at the old age your father must have been) the medicare would have and should have covered subsequent life-threatening complications. Specially over a period of four years. There is not a waiting line that long in Canada for any procedure (save perheaps transplants which are dependent on donors).
He certainly didn't have the financial resources to sue.
I hear we have "loser pays court costs" system here.. maybe that had something to do with it.
Apparently, his situation is becoming increasingly common.
Says you.
The fact remains that if he could purchase health insurance on a free market, there would be no issue of getting treatment.
Riiight. A US HMO would spring for elective and risky procedures happily and cheerfully!
Sure, that is why Krupp and others never sponsored and supported Hitler.. oh wait.
The only "financial elite" was the State, as all industry was required to be subservient to the State.
And the "state" was defined as ... the elite with the Leader and his merry crew at the helm. All large non-Jewish German corporations were granted unprecedented powers over their workers ... and their owners and the Leader formed a mutual-admiration society. You can produce as many abstract "definitions" as you wish, the fact remains that is what occured. No to mention the profits they all raked in during the Nazi militarization program.
This is beyond mental retardation.
I couldn't describe your delusions any better myself.
This is a real definition of fascism that was not invented by some communist lunatic:
Then google some more, you will find that this is just one of many complimentary definitions, this particular one focuses only one one aspect of the system (i.e. the authority and control). Next you are going to tell me that because fascists universally claimed to be "socialist" they granted powers to the workers...
Actually not quite. In places like USSR, Poland, Chechoslovakia etc, the disparity was that of a 2-room apartament of a citizen versus a small house in the woods of the top party official. One glance at the mansions and holdings of some of the Russian CEO's today and the still 2-room apartament of the average worker should dispell that ludicrous notion. The evil in the USSR's rendition of Communism was not disparity of wealth but disparity of power, and abuse of thereof.
Yes, fascism is a form of socialism, and therefore, exhibits much of the same inequities that we saw under communism.
No. In Fascism the word "socialism" is a misnomer. The definition of fascism is a collusion of big business and state.
Oh, I see. You are somehow equating relative freedom with "fascism".
Libertarianism has just as much "freedom" in it for the average, not super-wealthy person in it as fascism has "socialism".
That is not the definition of fascism. Fascism is a system characterized by collusion of wealth (particularly coprorate wealth) and the State while coupled with authoritarian government and personality cult of the Leader. All of which results in a supreme, unchecked power of a clique of a financial elite (although, ironically, in most known fascisct societies the control soon spiralled out of the hands of the industrialist manipulators and into the hands of increasingly insane Leader). The critical point to remember: contrary to its name ("national socialist workers party") the sytem was a concotion by the very rich for the benefit of the very rich, granting them nearly absolute powers over everyone else.
A governmental system in which the State is reduced to its basic functions of protecting the people under its oversight from other people, and enforcing contracts.
The con is in the term "basic" function, just as the con is in the term "socialist" in fascism. According to most advocates of Libertarianism I run into, roads and police are not included (as they believe in 0% taxation). Subsequently I can only imagine a set of private armies defending holdings of tax-free warlords.
How, exactly, are these two comparable again?
In both there is no effort to protect those at the bottom of the society from the ones at the top. Both are attempts to enable the very wealthy to acquire near absolute power under the disguise of some ideology, "socialism" in the case of fascism and "freedom from taxation" in the case of Libertarianism.
Your analysis is right on the money. I will add this to my assortment of clubs to beat the nutcases with.
Please note however that even with the shortage of staff our medical system will still try to help. Something like 1800 Ontarians were sent abroad in 2000 for advanced cancer therapy procedures. This is why I find it highly suspicious that this "routine" procedure of his was somehow maliciously denied ... and if I sense the vibe he is sending correctly ... by some sneering members of a vast left-wing conspiracy who wore Che Guevarra and Lenin pins while at it.
Not so. Larry was making as much noise about his co-laboration with Linus everywhere he could as loud as he could. Why, he was trumpeting it back in 1997. It was his major marketing device in various conferences I am familiar with.