Birdfolly

I was referring to the context of secondary educational institutions. Of course white people aren't the only alumni, thanks in part to AA. Preferrential alumni treatment works to give more to those who already have, at the expense of others. Are you actually defending preferential alumni treatment??? What happened to everyone being judged by their own merits and accomplishments, not who their parents are? To answer your second comment, I wasn't be thrilled to be passed over or given less aid for college because of AA. AA isn't the best solution. I liked the solution that you mentioned earlier about improving city schools a lot better but it's just not happening yet. Until it does, programs like AA are one of the few ways out of poverty.

We could have used some of that empathy in the AA thread. Oops did I say that out loud? ;)

You don't have to call it discrimination if you don't want to. I didn't call it discrimination either. Those policies, however, contribute to the economic(and power)gap between the white people and minorities. I think that is a big problem. You guys are just fine with it because it doesn't hurt you. Here's the part where you say how anyone can do anything if they try hard enough. I say, how about some active steps toward economic equality.

Good point on Princeton, whoops! ;) My apologies for a weak post. Of course there is no AA for whites because we are already at the top of the food chain. There are, however, legal policies that help keep us there even beyond the fact that we already historically have most of the money and power. 1) family of alumni get special considerations, thus my flawed Bush example. This is legal in the US. 2) Children in poor neighborhoods(also correlates to high percentage of minorities) go to poor, crowded schools and get a worse education even though they take the same standardized tests. There is no law in the US that says everyone gets the same education. It is obviously not true. I understand that these issues may occur to a lesser degree, or not at all in Canada. This may account for some misunderstanding between us.

I love how everybody wants to get rid of affirmative action for minorities(because races in America are SO equal now) but no one wants to get rid of the similar policies that benefit whites. Relatives of alumni get preferences too. Do we really think that GW Bush got into Princeton on his own merits? Do you think any rich kid ever got to go to college more easily than a poor person? This high and mighty shit people are saying about how affirmative action is racist is getting pretty old. Ace, if you say you aren't racist enough times maybe we'll believe you. Acknowledging our own racist feelings(ya, that's right, we all have them unless we grew up in a vacuum) is one of the first steps to really understanding ourselves. We can be anti-racist while still acknowledging that. That said, I think AA is a flawed system but until everyone in this country has access to the same public education before college, the income gap between minorities and whites is closed, and racial advantages for whites are eliminated, something has to be done.

So do you think that a plant disease epidemic spreading through farms that grow the same Monsanto seed would not be a huge problem? Hello? Food shortage? When there is diversity, even within one farm from field to field and year to year, yield and resistance naturally stay high. Did you ever think that the seed monopolies might benefit greatly from such a "problem". I would never want to leave such an important thing as the world's crops in the hands of a few corporations no matter how good they are at GM. by Vandana Shiva: "The fabrication of the data by Monsanto on Bt. Cotton India is an example of the promotion of an unnecessary, untested, hazardous technology through pseudo science. While yields of GM cotton fell by 80% and farmers had losses of nearly Rs. 6,000/acre. Monsanto used Martn Qaim (University of Bonn) and David Zilberman) University of California, Berkeley) to publish an article in Science to claim that yields of Bt. Cotton increased by 80%. Qaim and Zilberman published the paper on the basis of data provided by Monsanto from Monsanto's trials not on the basis of the harvest from farmers fields in the first year of commercial planting. The fabricated data that presents a failure of Bt. Cotton as a miracle hides the fact that non-target insects and diseases increased 250-300%, costs of seed were 300% more and quantity and quality of cotton was low. This is why on April 25, 2003, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Government of India did not give clearance to Monsanto to sell Bt. Cotton seeds in Northern India."

Obviously you've never heard of Monsanto, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. I've opened my mouth enough on this thread.

Here are some interesting quotes that go mostly unheard about the subject: Hiroshima quotes

I think I'm getting ill. Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand when he was gassing his own people. He knew this but said nothing. I believe that you care about Iraqis but lets get this straight: The US government and the corporations that are interwoven with it do not care about brown people abroad any more than they have to to stay in power and in business. Of course some individuals do but they can't act on it in the current system. All of their actions must be questioned and analyzed IMO. If you really care about humanity you might want to take a more critical look at US policy and see who really benefits and who gets forgotten.

Agreed ;D

It looks like corn and tastes like corn when the developers find a result that "works". Corn that came from a pig??? What are you talking about? You're right, it is just a big IF. I'm not going around saying GM corn is going to kill you or make you sprout a third arm. I'm just saying that we should do proper research before releasing let alone forcing this seed onto the farms all over the planet. Corn cross pollinates over many miles breeding will all corn it reaches. Is it just me or is it just responsible to take precautions on something this important? Corporations will just do whatever they can do to make money so it is up to us regular people to educate ourselves and keep them in check.

Those who thought they might actually have a chance to control their own country and resources aren't going to like it either. Eg never said he was surprised and neither am I.

I agree with your comment on contamination of species but I don't know if you guys are getting my point. The corn with the pig gene spliced in doesn't necessarily digest like corn or a pig. Its something else. That something else should be studied more before we are subjected to eating it without even knowing we are eating it, which is the way it is in the states. There are only a limited number of living things that are healthy for people to eat, even if they are made up of similar basic building blocks. These foods may be safe but we just don't know. We don't fully understand the GM technology that we are messing with, at this point.

Ya, but the point is if you splice a pig gene into corn it's not corn any more. Not all plants are good for you, let alone a plant that has its genes spliced with a pig. This is new territory and there is very limited research at this point though we are all guinea pigs(and we didn't even have to splice their genes with ours, heh).

I agree that GM plants need to be isolated, but with the field tests going on right next to farmers fields, that's not likely. Companies like Monsanto even sue farmers for stealing their strand of corn after THEY contaminate the farmer's crop. Obviously we are not where we need to be and this needs to change. I know you are a self proclaimed technocrat so I won't argue GM babies on a moral level. I just think that if you start manipulating the gene pool like that, it would lead to less gene diversity, more sterility, more mutations, and could threaten the species. I mean if we can botch things up and use advanced technology too soon we will. I think history shows us that. As far as one child per family, I'd say that we could at least start with free contraception and lots of education about reproductive responsibility, maybe even a tax break. I don't know about anywhere else, but here in the states people are encouraged in many ways to reproduce as much as possible. Population growth is one of the positive signs of a city, for example. It comes down to money, as always. I don't want to get side tracked any more than I already have. okbye

I'd be interested in knowing some more about the woman and her organization before swallowing the 160 but I agree that Saddam killed people and that Iraq was living in daily fear of him. I agree with Zamboe that this war was fed to us as a war to stop Saddam from using WMD's on us in the immediate future(thus the whole pre-emptive strike thing). THAT is what we in America were barraged with every day, not saving the Iraqi people, although that was mentioned as well. Whether the Iraqis are better off now is certainly open to debate. What is hard to take is the idea that the US cares about the Iraqi people at all. The sanctions were UN sanctions but it is well documented that the US played a key role in the security council as basic items such as water pumps, morphine(for dying cancer patients), and cancer meds for the vastly increasing cancer patients were routinely denied as imports in return for oil. The actual figures of deaths resulting from sanctions are impossible to be accurate about so I won't even go there but I wonder if those are included in the woman's numbers. We should also remember that the "minimal" civilian casualties are still greater than those who died on 9-11, for example. All this stuff should weigh in somehow along with possible side motives and whatnot.

There was some misunderstanding due to Wolfowitz's statement. This correction was issued by The Guardian on the subject: Correction -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Wolfowitz A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, "The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." The sense was that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

Here's the link again. Sorry about the progressive site but most conservatives don't want to write articles about this stuff. It's sourced just like any other article. I guess the to you the New York Times is unbiased and the Rush was ok with you? US Faces Growing Charges of War Crimes

Allergic reactions and other possible health risks GM food will not ease hunger

I agree with you that Western society is not interested in using GM crops to solve the world's hunger problems. At this point, corporations like Monsanto are forcing, through aid agreements, GM seed on struggling 3rd world countries. They are also a threat to contaminate the worlds crops with these GM plants that we don't know are safe for consumption yet. The common line that these crops perform better has also yet to be proven. It IS possible that this technology could be used for good but when is the last time such a technology was used carefully and responsibly, and not just for profit. Such recklessness is especially dangerous with GM's because they can live and spread on their own if not contained. Infortunately, these kinds of decisions are made mostly by trade organizations instead of democratic institutions but that is a different topic, I guess.

I'd like to see you execute the first person. I think you just like to run your sewer. Execute without trial? How are you supposed to find out who participated without a trial? What a joke.

On the subject of alleged war crimes by the US soldiers in Iraq: US Soldiers Kill 3 Teens US Faces Growing Charges of War Crimes Jennings said that at least one Marine battalion commander admitted as much to 'Time' magazine when he said -- after the killing by his unit of nearly 100 Iraqis without an injury to his men -- ''Let's quit pussyfooting, and call it what it is. It's murder, it's slaughter.''

Economic Left/Right: -10.00 Authoritarian/Libertarian: -8.97 I agree that the questions were definately geared toward the left. The chart that they showed with the British politicians, I'm sure was based on what the writers thought their actions would translate to in this survey. The way the questions were presented made it hard to feel right about picking many of the conservative viewpoints. But maybe that's just me, my score is out there!

Liberal makes me think of Bill Clinton or something(yuck). I consider myself some kind of anarchist, i guess. Definately way to the left.

Oh, I thought the popular argument these days was that we were "liberating" the Iraqis because we felt sorry for them. Maybe that's because we attacked them, unprovoked, and we didn't find much of a threat at all. Whether the UN is effective or not, the reason it was formed was to de-escalate conflict and prevent wars of aggression. These days all that amounts to is bickering about the US because they are powerless to stop us or our allies.