You seem to know a lot hoser, maybe you should be our resident history guy, hehe.
Do I get any special privilages with that position? Heh.
(Completely incidental note: I think this is or may soon be the biggest/longest/most read thread in UM history)
Canada's record isn't perfect and we could be charged for a lot of the same things as other countries, but it's all an issue of degree. We screwed over some of our natives, yes, and we turned back boatloads of fleeing Jews preceeding WWII. This latter fact may be the single item of my heritage of which I am most ashamed, but all sorts of other countries did the same (not that this makes it okay, but...), and Canadian history's penchant for screwing natives is a distant second to the U.S.'s history of annihilating them, especially if you look at more recent developments to make amends like the creation of Nunavut (for what it's worth) and the Niss'ga Treaty. So, no, we're not perfect, but compared to Chinese history of the past hundred years I must say that in all fairness, comparisons are far outweighed by contrasts.
Lina, "Just today I'm reading in the paper about a treaty that China and Russia have signed -- in an effort to achieve world dominance." Really?! I'm completely unaware of this... I'm going to look it up now but if you remember (or still have that paper kicking around) the name of this treaty that would be very cool, thanks.
As for the IOC giving the 2008 games to China, there's pros and cons to that and I'm not too informed to make a strong case either way. I will say that it strikes me as being interesting that a civilian international athletic comittee has what many people view to be a strong control over political events and the ability to do such an apparent amount to provoke change in the political climate of the world. I guess I'll simply say that I hope it induces the positive results the IOC is hoping for in this obviously politically-driven decision so the discussion of whether or not this was the right thing will be moot by the time it's over.
And, for more pot stirrage, here's another off-topic thought I've developed: The original "Stirring the Pot" thread dealt with, amongst other things, Affirmative Action and I strongly opposed the idea of using reverse discrimination to make up for past historical injustice... but I have a thought. If we're going to go ahead with AA anyways, let's carry it out to it's maximum, I say. Let's make up for every injustice... EVER, to the fullest.
Warning: Extremely offensive facetious thoughts follow
For starters, I suggest we execute one christian for every Jew that has been pointlessly murdered throughout history. We start with the Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, and KKK, then work our way through the bible belt and massacre random men women and children until that number has been reached. Of course, we'd have to calculate that number first, keeping the crusades, inquisition, holocaust, and other random attempted genocides and abhorrent mass-murders in mind. And, we'd have to burn one church for each synagogue that's been attacked in the past 2000 years. Then, because we feel sorry for how we'd just been persecuting the Christians, we can compensate for our own actions by getting the U.N. to create a Christian state somewhere in what used to be Palestine for them to live. The Isralies and Palestinians won't mind, right?
Actually, according to THE ONION, a similar process is already in place with the creation of Ethniklashistan - read full story here:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3723/west_bank.html
) Atheists are people for whom the OBVIOUS impossibility of such a phenomenon is aparent. Some of us just can't even begin to understand how simple-minded the majority of society is to fall for something so utterly impossible. There is absolutely no difference -- zero, nada, none, zip, zilch -- between our God and the mythical gods of past civilizations. When we can't understand something, we give "God" credit. How about just accepting that we simply don't know how life was created? And don't say, "if we don't know, then how can you rule out God," because there are certain things that we know DON'T make sense. Science may not prove what *IS*, but it does prove what *IS NOT*. I think if you believe in God, you probably can't be convinced otherwise -- because the absurdity of it is so obvious that, if you had the mental capacity to understand it, you already would. there, i said it. i shouldn't have, but i did. let the flaming begin.
Apparently, we're honeymooning on the land of Opeth (Opet?).
