JayB

What we need is more tactical advice from Canada....

Try a market distortion caused by the very effective Electricians union. Hell now he's even anticipating my replies. I give Carl my proxy vote on this argument from this point on.

Word. I would just like to point out that this marks the second time that Carl and I have been in agreement on an issue, and this time, it involves the labor market. If the end wasn't nigh before, now its time to duck and cover....

Identify the location where you left them, the make, and the approximate size and I'll be happy to hand them over.

Killer.

If we accept the notion that all individuals are free to construct their own "truths" that are equally valid, then we have descended into the realm in which there is no means of distinguishing between the claim that, say, the genocide in Rwanda never happened and the claim that it did. "Hey - everyone has there biases, what make yours any more likely to lead you to the truth than the next guys?" "Why are people so upset about a film that claims the genocide never happened?" An extreme example, to be sure, but when the standard of reasoning that my evil homonym applies to films prevails, there is nothing - apparently - that will enable or entitle the viewer to refute the claims made in such a film. In the absence of some unattainable, Platonic standard of absolute truth any falsehood contained in "documentary," no matter how egregious, deliberate, or harmful has to be swallowed whole and given equal standing, apparently. You've got your biases, I've got mine, and The Truth is unobtainable so we'd better just give up on trying to distinguish fact from fiction. What a crock of shit. Yes, everyone has their biases, which influence their opinions, which alters the manner in which they present their evidence in ways that can be so subtle as to be nearly undetectable or so painfully obvious. A movie in which subtle biases, a lack of time, or what have you leads to a situation in which the film's central claims are inconsistent with the evidence upon which it is based, this film may still be called a documentary, albeit a flawed one, in which the depth of the flaws is dependent upon the magnitude of the deviation from the evidence. When you deliberately distort, fabricate, or omit evidence which does not support or refutes your central claim, you have veered into the realm of propoganda. There's a difference. All of this blithe indifference to the correlation between Moore' central claims and his evidence makes me wonder what else some of the folks here would excuse in the name of "bias." Say there's a film put out by Serb's that claims that a massacre of Kosovars never happened. They claim that the "dead" Kosovars simply decided to move elsewhere, and that no one witnessed any such actions taking place, etc, etc, etc. There's also a film put together by a group of Kosovars which claims that the massacre did happen. They present census records which record the identity of all of the persons living in the town in which the massacre purportedly happened. There is a mass grave near the town. This grave contains the remains of corpses carrying identification cards which match the names of the missing persons. The remains also have dental records which match those of the missing persons. The shell casings found on the perimeter of the grave come from an arms factory known to have supplied the Serbian army, etc, etc, etc. Both filmmakers have agendas to further. They are both deeply "biased." Per the reasoning on display above, there's no way to distinguish one from the other and both sides of the story must be granted equal status as true because everyone is biased, and absolute truth is unobtainable - so we have no responsibility to differentiate between the two. The guilty go unpunished, the dead unreckoned, and the story fades away into a mist of relativistic ennui. Nice.

To OlyClimber. Very cool.

$87 Billion dollars is the amount of money that both houses of congress voted in favor of spending on the mission in Iraq. End of story. Yes - it would be much more progressive to spend nothing and guarantee that Iraq will descend immediately into full-on state failure and civil war, the likes of which will generate civilian casualties several orders of magnitude higher than those generated by the invasion itself. We certainly don't want to be spending any more money providing the troops serving over there with all of the supplies and equipment that they need to do their job as safely and effectively as possible. We are going to be in Iraq for the forseeable future. Even if Bush loses. This is reality. What the formerly anti-war camp is now protesting against now are efforts to provide the necessary resources for the troops deployed there and to give their efforts to rebuild the country the maximum chance to succeed. If you want the president out of office, there are plenty of ways to take shots at him without catching the troops and the Iraqi civilains in the crossfire.

Anyone remember what happened after the Mullah's took over in Iran? They made the Shah look like strawberry shortcake. Compare bodycounts - it's not even close. In one of Bernard Lewis' new books on the Middle East he claims that interviews with the hostage takers recorded long after the fact reveal that their purpose was to thwart what they feared would be a sort of rapproachment with the United States, concurrent with the rise of moderates within the revolution who would undermine their goal of establishing a retrograde theocracy. In their minds decisively severing any relationship with/antagonizing the US would better serve their ends, and keeping hostages was the best means available to do so. He also mentions that they were astonished and emboldened by America's tepid response to the seizure of the embassy, and handed over the hostages when Reagan took office because they were afraid that he would respond "like a cowboy." Not sure who's got the best sources but this is at least as plausible, if not more so, than the "underhanded" claim. Why in the hell would the Iranians want to hand a triumph to a President who made no secret of the fact that he would be a determined foe of theirs from the moment he took office?

Yes. Now get back to your ideological Gulag...

Thanks for the update. It's been a while since anyone had news about the conditions on the upper part of the mountain.

What was this thread aboot again?

Murray: This is like the geopolitical version of "Its a Wonderful Life" that we are playing here. Pretend that the US never existed and that you have a conglomeration of former colonies spawned by the Euros, the Japanese, or whoever occupying the region to your south. Pretend futher that they don't get along. Some like Canada, some don't. Some of those that don't are on your border. If such a situation existed, the odds are pretty high that you would have to: -Field an army that's actually capable of defending the territory, instead of what you have now, which is essentially an armed division of the Red Cross. -Pay for the said Army yourselves. What you have now is essentially a direct subisdy from the US. Its pretty silly for anyone to expect our neighbors to the North to acknowledge any benefit whatsoever that they derive from close proximity to the US though, as expending untold billion and hundreds of thousands of lives saving the Euros, the Koreans, et al from certain conquest and subjugation hasn't deterred them from talking shit about the US all the while. Hobbits and Rangers.

You and the Mexicans would have certainly given pause to any potential threats. I can see the Admirals in the Japaneese Navy recoiling in horror at the prospect of encountering the Mexican Armada and Canada's flotila of modified ferries on the open sea. The Swiss were bankrolling the Nazis, who would have finished them off once they secured the rest of Europe. The Swedes halted the Nazis for all of a day, and no one except other South American backwaters has ever given a shit about Peru. Had Haber not figured out a way to fix nitrogen on the eve of WWI, a European power or two may have had an interest in all of the nitrates lying in the Atacama desert, and had the Chileans not been willing to fork over every ounce they had to whoever could cut them a check, then there may have been some interest in their neighbor to the South, but certainly not them. Peru is a copper mine with a parliament, and not much more.

Canadian troops have performed valiantly in just about every conflict that they've had the misfortune to be involved in - no question about it. But let's not kid ourselves. It wasn't the dread of the mighty Canadian Navy, Army, Airforce, et al that has convinced the rest of the world to leave North America alone.

You have the luxury of utter irrelevance. You could declare war on all of humanity and no one would notice, much less care.

And the reason that no one has attacked Canada in the last XXX years may have something to do with the said nation being in close proximity to a heavily armed nation to the south and not so much to do with the mighty deterent provided by the Canadian armed forces. Maybe. Ditto for shipping lanes, etc.

And...Canada can just send us a check for the free security that they've been provided for the past 200 odd years and call it good.

BTW - If you define "Legal" as specifically authorized by a UN Security Council Resolution, all of our actions directed towards thwarting the slaughters in Bosnia/Kosovo were illegal. What if some renagade nation had actually sent troops into thwart the genocide in Rwanda without UN authorization? Oh the immorality that would have ensued... It's odd that "Sanctioned by the UN Security Council" is the functional equivalent of "moral" for some people. By that rationale our interventions in the Eastern Bloc were immoral. The ends being pursued and the tactics involved are what determines the morality or lack thereof in a millitary campaign, not the stamp of approval from the UN or any other authority. In fact, this especially true when considering the composition of the security council, being as China and Russia alone killed off something on the order of 60 million of their own citizens this past century. UN authorization - neccessary , perhaps. Moral - hardly.

Triple-Set of Cams. Just kidding. If you can provide a detailed description of the items you lost and where they were left they are yours. Contact me by post or PM.

Comments from the other post: "You have got to be kidding me. That is my worst nightmare. Argh Was it only the climbing gear that they took or did they take other valuables? It strikes me as terribly odd that random burglers would steal them while leaving all of the other posessions alone. If this is indeed what happened it suggests that someone knew about your stash and targeted you accordingly, which in turn suggests that it was someone that you knew or someone that had a chance to scope out your place. Throw any parties lately? Got any friends with sketchy aquaintances that might have an addicition to feed? I am sure that you have thought of all of these possibilities already, but I am just throwing them out ther for others to consider. If you haven't already, I would also fax the list to every second-hand gear shop in the PNW. "

Steroids are rarely, if ever, beneficial to endurance atheletes.

I am pretty close to ideal. I am going to inform my girlfriend immediately.

You have got to be kidding me. That is my worst nightmare. Argh Was it only the climbing gear that they took or did they take other valuables? It strikes me as terribly odd that random burglers would steal them while leaving all of the other posessions alone. If this is indeed what happened it suggests that someone knew about your stash and targeted you accordingly, which in turn suggests that it was someone that you knew or someone that had a chance to scope out your place. Throw any parties lately? Got any friends with sketchy aquaintances that might have an addicition to feed? I am sure that you have thought of all of these possibilities already, but I am just throwing them out ther for others to consider. If you haven't already, I would also fax the list to every second-hand gear shop in the PNW.

This site is like a mini-Alaska: The odds are good but the goods are odd. Good Luck.