On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Let's close the Canadian border entirely
and see how long you last without imports from the US, not to mention our
tourist money.

Canada has (and has had for a long time) a significant favourable trade
balance over the US. If you close the border, you lose 10% of your oil,
lots of natural gas, a lot of electricity in the northeast states,
pulp and paper, wood, cars and trucks and lots and lots of other goods.
The energy cuts alone would have you choking long before we would.

There is more dollar value in imports across the Ontario-Michigan border
alone than to the US from any other country. Imports across the
river at Sarnia is greater than the imports from Japan to the US.

Again, you're talking thru your hat.

Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

In fact, the Catholic church, through the Jesuit order is largely responsible
for dragging the world out of the Dark Ages.

While the Jesuits have long been educated and open to new ideas, that claim
is pure hyperbole.

Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

War is hell. It's hardly surprising that spending has increased, we're at
war.

He was doing that _before_ the war on terrorism. He expanded the government
itself - this has nothing to do with military spending.

We'll do
that as soon as the cowards in the EU start helping out with the war on
terrorism and we can bring our troops home.

It's _your_ war - you got yourself into it, you can get yourself out of it.
Besides, Bush's boys claimed it would only cost $2B; it has so far cost
$200B. That's your problem too. The EU nations were trying to keep you
out of trouble, but you insisted on screwing yourself anyway.

Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Ultimately, somebody has to pay the price of the water.

Yes, so what? Everybody has to pay for water, one way or another.

California's agricultural water usage is enormous. If agriculture
was cut in half, there would be enough water freed up to double
the population and industry in CA without any change in consumption
patterns. That would roughly double the state GDP while dropping
less than 2% of GDP in agricultural production. It seems there
are better ways of spreading the cost of water around.

Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Because, as someone famous once said, (I paraphrase) Democracy will survive
only until the citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse out
of the public treasury.

Well, that sounds like what's happening in the US now, except that you're
using debt markets instead of the treasury. Since the debt is drawn on
the treasury, same difference. As long as you vote for fiscally irresponsible
Republicans who cut taxes instead of pay bills...


Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Since you live on debt, you'll be broke

Don't be silly. Who gets shafted in a bankruptcy?

Yours is a country that can't survive, so it seems, without
debt. If you default or go bankrupt, you can't borrow except
at very high costs. Your dollar will also trash, making imports,
which you thrive on, too expensive.

The vast majority of those imports are luxury goods, not necessities or
staples. We can get along without them just fine.

You mean like oil?

Mike

On 15-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Well, let's see...the "countries" in the EU are now pretty much "states"
like those in the US, aren't they?

Different languages, different cultures, different governments... I'd
say they're not. By comparison, the US states are a union with weak
state rights.

You do know that an alternative term for
an independent nation is "state," don't you?

Semantic triviality. Nothing to do with the US use of "state".

Where do you think the EU got
the idea? From us.

Yes of course, without the US nothing would exist. This might come
as a surprise to you, but the idea of an association of states goes
back a long, long, long time before 1776.

Total bull****, seen from my position as a person living in a country with
government provided health care.

Uh huh. Do you have heart disease? Diabetes? Cancer?

No but members of my family do and are receiving fine treatment. Timely and
quite effective. You have no idea what medical care is like in other countries,
so why waste your time writing the drivel that you do?

Mike

Wilko wrote:

That reminds me, funny how the catholic church in essence kept the
population dumb for centuries by picking the brightest people as their
priests, and letting everyone else procreate, effectively eliminating
many of the smartest people from every generation from adding to the
gene pool.

Fortunately Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora and had 5 children.

That's where the Usenet is so useful -- we can all learn... your
response caused me to do some research and i came up with slightly
different info..

"1525 heiratete sie Martin Luther. Dem Ehepaar wurden sechs Kinder
geboren, von denen vier das Erwachsenenalter erreichten." -- 6 kids, 4
of whom survived into adulthood... who knows which source is correct,
but thanks for sending me on a learning journey.

frtzw906

BCITORGB wrote:

Wilko: thank you very much for your insight into what happened in
holland. horrible as it was, i audibly laughed when i read "People like
Theo van Gogh, who used openly hostile remarks towards muslims, like
calling them
"goat-****ers" ". while there is, of course, nothing to laugh at in the
statement i found myself thinking -- and i mean no offense to you --
that the dutch language does not lend itself well to subtlety and
nuance. dutch must be the most direct, honest language around.

Dunno about honest, too many politicians speak Dutch, you know, but the
Dutch do have long standing a reputation for being direct and to the
point. Might have something to do with the trader's mentality and living
so close together with so many people that you need to let off steam
without being worried about the other person bashing your head in, I think.

like you say "which IMHO is more disturbing than the so called
anti-islamic violence rising, is that the openness of our society has
changed." this, too, is the impression i got. however, reports of these
things in the media tend to concentrate on the sensational rather than
the background.

As is the case with most news, I think that it's about the drawing of
viewers rather than reporting what is really important to most people.

when we talked about the future of denmark, she expressed only
one concern: radical islam! she was not concerned about the fact that
they were either arabs or persians. even though she was an atheist, she
did not mind the islamic faith in moderation. but what she saw, and
what she abhorred was the growing militancy of the radical muslim
refugees/immigrants.

That's been an issue here as well, although the scale at which it's
happening is not so big. Considering the percentages, that's actually a
very small minority.

wilko says:
===========
Because muslims are tolerated and left to do what they as long as they
bother no-one, we expect them to respect others and not try to force
their beliefs onto others as well. Alas, a few of them fail to
understand that.
===========

alas, i fear that is the problem with radical fundamentalists: they
don't know when they've pushed far enough. they fail to understand that
tolerance has it's limits. they fail to see that the line in the sand
is the very tolerance that gives them their liberty. by all mean, "do
your own thing", but don't think you can define what "my thing" is!

It's just a pity that those (religious) fanatics have a way of pushing
people from the moderate center into the extreme, forcing them to admit
colour, even if the people don't want to chose. For me the particular
religion doesn't matter so much, as long as it's advocating using force
to further its own goals it's pretty much a threat to most people, in my
view.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/