# Dubya Dubya III-The Russians Are Coming



## AlienRadar (Jan 4, 2003)

http://www1.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=1438&lang=en 

"Unprecedented levels of activity of the Russian military confirm Moscow’s serious concern with the situation around Iraq. Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov supported the proposal by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to terminate all preparatory work for ratification of the US-Russian strategic arms reduction treaty. Ivanov denounced the flights of US spy planes near Russian borders and on March 24 Ivanov traveled to the Sarov federal nuclear center (Arzamas-16) to review currently work on the development of new types of nuclear weapons. Commenting on the reasons for his trip to the nuclear center Ivanov said that the current international security system is “literally ripping along the seams.” 

Possible meanings:
-Russians will offer to help out in post-war Iraq
-Russians will step in if the US decides to go after Iran next.
-Russians figure pictures on CNN of Russian navy,missile silos and remembering that these guys have enough weapons to destroy the world 1000 times over might give US hawks pause about expanding the war.
-Putin up for re-election soon.Yank bashing and sabre-rattling may score big with Yank-hating voters.
-We are all doomed.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

The Russian bear has awoken from its slumber.


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## AlienRadar (Jan 4, 2003)

On a more refreshing note... http://www1.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=1425&lang=en


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

The former Red Army is a wasted nub of it's former glorious self. Morale is at an all time low and their gear is now even more out of date than it was when the Soviet Union collapsed a decade ago. Many of the officers aren't being paid...and the regular foot soldiers and pilots are forced to find second jobs to make ends meet.

The US...on the other hand...has not exactly been sitting still while the former Soviet forces rusted away. These days, any sort of contest between them would be NO contest. None at all. The Russians know this. Boy, do they know this.

Not only that....

Russia currently exists largely on loan guarantees and grants from the west. Mostly from the US.

Consequently, any sort of "adventurous activity" by Putin would be instantaneously devastating to the Russian people. What little they have gained would be gone in a thrice...and they would be back to lining up for stale cucumbers. Like they were before the collapse of communism.

And keep in mind that much of the former Soviet war machine's military might is now spread among the countries that they held in their grasp. Places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Poland et al, are very much onside with the US. THEY now have a lot of the ships, planes and tanks that used to be a large part of the Red Army. And THEY...more even than the Russian people...are totally committed to not letting Russian leaders get the upper hand again. Ever.

If there were any problem with their former masters, they would be the very first to step in and smack them down. Big time. 

And I'll bet there are a few grudges they'd like to settle, as well.   

No...Putin and his crew are just trying to cover their complicity in Saddams weapons programs. As is France. these guys...or people in their countries..have been selling illegal gear to Saddam for a long time now. They have also been helping with tactics during the early days of this particular military action. Advising the Iraqis, in the vain hope that the US can be stopped before a total collapse of the current dictatorship can happen.

Because...once it does...there will be a lot of difficult questions that they won't be able to answer without squirming around a bit.

That set of events could cause governments to fall, large companies to go out of business, and perhaps even change the face of the UN. Or even replace it with something more effective. Something that would work.

All of the above is about to happen. It should be quite a ride.

Stay tuned.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt mused:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> ...and perhaps even change the face of the UN. Or even replace it with something more effective. Something that would work. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The face of the UN is changing. It has become the face of the American eagle.

"You're with us or you're against us."

1. move the UN to the isle of Whyte (sp?) and declare it autonomous international territory
2. any member not paid in full after past due notice of 30 days, loses it vote and does not regain its vote unitl 120 days after account is brought up to date
3. UN military to be composed of coalition of member states under direct control of the UN
4. all offices are swept for "listening devices"
5. member UN countries in good standing give each other preferred trading status and all trade agreements must be honoured at the risk of voting priveleges
6. only the UN can declare war

I have not worked out the logistics of a security council, but I would not allow any one country a veto vote

I have only been working on this for 3 min. so give me some more time to come up with other concrete suggestions


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Okay macspectrum...then here's a suggestion for you to ponder while you're reorganising the UN...

How about a NEW UN? One that is only made up ONLY of countries where the actual people of those same countries have a say in their government? No dictatorships or absoloute monarchies, or "Presidents-for-life" thank-you.

Only totally free countries. No exceptions.

That way we'd have a better picture of what those countries really want to do when faced with major world events. One mans ideas...or the feelings of the whole land?

Which one is reality...and which one is a farce?

Want safety from aggression? Open and free trade? Good relations with the richest and most prosperous Nations on earth? An equal say in what the NEW UN does? Where it directs resources? Who to lend money to or bestow aid upon?Whether it makes war or peace?

Want a totally equal say in what direction the vast majority of the world's leading Nations are heading? Want a voice...or want to stand on the sidelines?


Fine. Then hold free and fair elections. Let the people speak for themselves. Let THEM decide.

Once you are a self-determining Nation where every single one of your citizens is guaranteed a voice, and a vote in regularly scheduled elections...then you will be welcomed into the NEW UN. 

No one else need apply.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Macnutt democracy is a long process and requires a level of wealth and education that is simply lacking in many emerging economies.
You place too much faith in the process itself - it needs traditions that build up over time and has to come from within with help from other SOVEREIGN nations who respect the sovereignty of ALL nation states.
You profess freedom - that cuts both ways. You believe in the individual having certain rights which the underlying basis for democratic government.
The same applies to sovereign nation states - you may not like it but they are members in equal standing and have the right to determine their own destinies.
In a democracy if a person attacks another then he gives up his self determining rights and the state steps in.
In the world it's the same with nations and the UN steps in .
Government and courts aren't perfect neither is the UN buts it's all we have.
We don't let cops do as they wish without civilian oversight.

Just remember there IS a good reason why the US and it's cultural is so hated and feared in many parts of the world...and disliked in many others.

You gain respect by respecting others and their differences. The US has squandered a lot of political capital by showing disrespect for other nations and cultures.

There needs to be a check on the unilateral projection of US power.....that's what the bigger issue is and it will come to the fore once the main fighting is over.

Lots to read
http://www.ceip.org/files/publications/2002-10-15-ottaway-FP.asp 
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D87C.htm 
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/enb/enb_home.ASP


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt proposed:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> How about a NEW UN? One that is only made up ONLY of countries where the actual people of those same countries have a say in their government? No dictatorships or absoloute monarchies, or "Presidents-for-life" thank-you. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK, but Canada has to get rid of the Queen as head of state, same for other Commonwealth countries.
UN to oversee voting in "democratic" countries so that leaders are not elected to power by a vote of their politically appointed supreme court justices, 5-4.

Oh, and make sure we get rid of Monaco too.
Doesn't Denmak have a monarchy?

Perhaps time for a global "charter of rights and freedoms" that all countries must abide by to be members of this new UN.

Deal?


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

one quick factoid to munch on;
the Bush admin. applied for $75 Billion for the current operations in the war on Iraq.

$50 Billion would have cured world hunger.

Which would have been the better example of democracy in action?

Which would have saved more lives? which action would have help to liberate countries from within by their own people. after all people who are fed now have time to turn their attention to "organizing" instead of scratching out an existence to feed themselves


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Okay macspectrum..who _caused_ most of the world hunger? Does it exist in free Nations? If not...then WHY not? Please explain.

Ten years ago the countries of Eastern Europe used to hover on the edge of starvation. Now they are pretty well-fed. What changed? Please explain.

Ten years ago the people of Russia were lined up for hours to buy a few sparse scraps of food from whatever government-run shop was open. They would even line up whenever they SAW a lineup...just to get whatever was available. These days, they have a lot of problems, but food lineups and near starvation are not a part of it. What changed? Please explain.

Ten years ago the people of Zimbabwe were largely well-fed. Now they are starving. What changed? Please explain.

Cuba and North Korea are on the brink of starvation (the latter IS starving, the former is almost there). Both of those countries have enough arable land to feed themselves, a very well educated population, and an industrial base that should provide the sort of prosperity that we currently enjoy.

What change could you make in those two countries that would solve the basic problem of "not enough food"?

Would you recommend more of the same...or a radical change from a failed system? Please explain.

And why are all of the free democracies largely free of this basic problem? And pretty much immune to famine and the variations of weather?

(I recall when, in the early eighties, the Soviet government was still blaming crop failures and food shortages on "damage to the fields from World War Two". FORTY YEARS LATER! When all of the other (free) countries of Europe had recovered, and were basking in wealth and an abundance of food. What a crock!)

So...I just have to ask....

50 billion to "cure world hunger" or 70 billion to remove Saddam. What, exactly, would you be "curing" when you spent that 50 billion?

Would that 50 billion just buy food for some of these poor humans for a year...or would it actually _solve_ the problem and let them stand on their own two feet afterwards? Forevermore...without some dictator screwing up the works and distorting the economy however he pleases?

Think about it.

The dictator certainly doesn't care...he's ALWAYS got enough to eat. He doesn't give a flying f*ck about the people he rules over. As long as he gets what he wants, he's happy. Screw the rest. It doesn't matter. THEY don't matter.  

And when that same dictator sends one of his minions to represent his country at the UN, do you suppose that the will of his people even enters into the question when the votes are cast? Do you suppose he even CARES? If so..why? Please explain.

And macspectrum...I think that you have, yet again, managed to misread things with regards to my proposal of "no absoloute monarchs" in the NEW UN.

You say that Canada would be eliminated from membership in the NEW UN because we have a Queen.

In what way is our Queen an "Absoloute Monarch"??!? Does she have any real say in the way that our country is Governed? Is she, somehow, an "absolute monarch"? If so, please explain.

Now.....I can see how having a long-term ruler with sweeping powers and no real scheduled election dates as being a serious detriment to admission in the NEW UN. That is a problem that I expect ALL Canadians to resolve in fairly short order. We really need to address this. It is not indicative of a true democracy, after all.

It's something LIKE one...and we all do get a choice in our government, at some point. 

But we're not quite there, when all is said and done. Canada is a near-democracy. We have a vote and a voice...for one single day out of every five years. The rest of the time we are pretty much powerless. No voice. No recourse. No way to really affect the government that a regional minority of us elected so many years ago.

Same goes for Denmark. Certainly for Monaco. And for several other countries.

Close to democracy. Very close. But no cigar.

The NEW UN would not be made up of countries who do not have total democracy. Close is not good enough. It would only get you "probation", or "potential member" status.

Want to join the club? As a voting member? Fine, become a real democracy. Let every one of your people vote in regularly scheduled elections without any coercion or repurcussions. Let them have their say...no matter what their background or religion or whatever. At a regular date. And let the whole world observe this process, up close and personal.

No exceptions.

THEN we'd have a real, and very effective UN. One that represents the thoughts and wishes of EVERY person in EVERY Nation that was a member.

And THAT might actually _work_, for a change.

A real force for peace and prosperity in the world. A valid group who were all on the same page.

What a difference THAT would be!


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*No...Putin and his crew are just trying to cover their complicity in Saddams weapons programs. As is France. these guys...or people in their countries..have been selling illegal gear to Saddam for a long time now. *<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Short memories, MacNutt... we mustn't forget about the US / UK supplies to Saddam prior to 1991, right? 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by macnutt:
*Cuba and North Korea are on the brink of starvation (the latter IS starving, the former is almost there). Both of those countries have enough arable land to feed themselves, a very well educated population, and an industrial base that should provide the sort of prosperity that we currently enjoy.*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What, are you downwind from some draft-dodgin' hippie cannibus cafe or something? I can't believe you'd actually smoke it yourself, so I'm assuming you are experiencing a second-hand alteration of your brain chemistry....

Cuba is not only feeding itself, it has been exporting its knowledge in sustainable organic agriculture to the rest of Latin America for several years now. In fact, Cuba won the "Alternative Nobel Prize" in Agriculture for its organic initiatives in 1999.

A few links to educate you on the current realities of Cuba, since you either (a) haven't been there in awhile, or (b) refuse to allow reality to penetrate your staunchly-held view that Cubans are unable to actually succeed on their own:

"Cuba puts own food on tables in sign of new self-sufficiency," By Anita Snow, Associated Press, May 19, 2001

"What Farming Is Like in Cuba," by Ken Stemo - CommonGround magazine, May 2002


"Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba," Co-published by Food First Books and ACTAF (Cuban Association of Agricultural and Forestry Technicians) and CEAS (Center for the Study of Sustainable Agriculture, Agrarian University of Havana)

From _personal_ experience over the past four years, I can attest to the presence of large quantities of organicly-produced vegetables, chicken, pork and beef at the farmer's markets in Havana (where Cubans can purchase goods using *pesos* instead of the expensive and corruptible U.S. dollar). In my travels through the rest of the country, from Pinar del Río in the west, to Santiago de Cuba in the east, it is obvious that this is not just a Havana phenomenon.

Havana does have the distinction of producing a ridiculously high level of its own produce, in comparison with other urban centres worldwide (in 1999, some neighbourhoods were producing 30 percent of their produce locally, in cultivated empty lots and suburban fields). The organic agriculture initiative had, by the end of 2001, created 60,000 jobs.

Now... you were saying something about Cuba "heading for starvation..." ?

M.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

cubamark, stop trying to confuse the issue with facts


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt asked:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> In what way is our Queen an "Absoloute Monarch"??!? Does she have any real say in the way that our country is Governed? Is she, somehow, an "absolute monarch"? If so, please explain. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm just saying we need to get rid of the crown. No need for an image of imperialism in our government or daily lives. 

Government employees must swear an oath of allegiance to the crown and all of it's descendants that take the throne. This is for Federal gov't employees and Ontario gov't employeess. I cannot speak for other provinces.

*How does the monarchy work in Canada?*
From the days of French colonization and British rule to today's self-government, Canadians have lived under a monarchy. Although Canada has been a self-governing "Dominion" in the British Empire since 1867, full legislative independence for Canada was established only in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster.

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, is also Canada's Queen and sovereign of a number of realms. In her capacity as Queen of Canada and official Head of State, she delegates her powers to a Canadian Governor General. Canada is thus a constitutional monarchy. Technically, the Queen rules but does not govern and her position is one of symbolism rather than function."

*Canada's monarchy has served us well for over 130 years. Why tamper with it?*
There are many reasons. For one thing, Canada and for that matter, most developed nations in the twenty-first century have evolved past the archaic concept of peerage and inherited rights in government and society. Symbolic as our connection to the monarchy is, when you stop and think about it, does a nation like ours - advanced in so many other ways - really need a wealthy aristocrat who only occasionally visits us every few years as our Head of State?

Another reason is that along with Canada's economic and cultural development, how we define ourselves as a people has become a significant part of our lives. To most of us, being Canadian means something more than just citizenship or a place to call home. As a mature nation, we take pride in our country and our accomplishments as a people. More and more, we also care about what our international peers think of us. Perhaps that explains why we get a little testy when those outside our borders believe us to be less of a nation than we really are, simply because we're too polite to cut the remaining symbolic link to our former colonial master.

And let's not neglect the potential benefit that creating our own republic will have on calming our unity crisis. Many would argue that the current impasse between our two English and French solitudes is enhanced by our reluctance to make "the whole greater than the sum of the parts", and to forge a new merged political entity without ties to the country that subjugated the French-speaking nation that resides within Canada. French Canada has evolved for two hundred and fifty years without a link to their monarchy and consequently, as a culture, are that much further advanced than the English speaking part. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that they want to separate. Maybe the solution is for English Canada to say, "Wait for us, we're separating with you!"

*How will removing the Queen as Canada's Head of State change our government?*
Our current executive head of state, the Governor General, has a largely ceremonial role in the operation of Canada's government. One option would be for a President (or whatever we choose to call the position) to simply inherit that role initially, with a later process to decide if any further changes are required for the position. With the exception of being the representative of the People of Canada rather than the Crown, it's possible - perhaps even likely - that the change will barely be noticeable to most Canadians

I guess you never did read the website and join the fight for Canada to become a Republic, eh?
http://www.canadian-republic.ca


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## MasterBlaster (Jan 12, 2003)

a


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

MasterBlaster, yesterday I received (via our website http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca ) an inquiry from a 17-year old American student. This kid was planning to spend the summer "volunteering in a Cuban hospital", and had begun collecting medical donations. 

It was my unfortunate duty to inform him that he was forbidden by his government (aka _the world's defender of freedom_ (hah!)) to visit Cuba. The U.S. treasury department also recently shut down a provision that allowed for educational visits by U.S. citizens to Cuba. The fascist ba*****s have also begun cracking down on those who visit Cuba via third countries such as Canada, issuing fines of around $60,000 to little old ladies who go on birdwatching or bicycling tours of the country.

It is quite obvious that the U.S. government does not want its citizens to see that Cuba is not the tropical gulag that the State Department and its media parrots try to portray. Knowledge is dangerous, after all.... 

M


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

maybe cuba is on the list for "liberation"?


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## MasterBlaster (Jan 12, 2003)

a


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

MacNutt I really had some hope since you called yourself a realist but your view of realpolitik is just too far off base to even address.  
Unrealistic idealism that's rarely even cogent









What are you going to do - run an army that way - No if not why not??

Oh BTW - Home of brave Land of the Free note http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1001674,00.asp 

You want people with equal voices but not nations with equal voices.

You like a bully when he's perceived as a "good guy" but not when he's a "bad guy".

Law and order is okay except when Guantanamo makes it "okay" to ignore it.















Pardon me if I'm completely confused. Talk about situational ethics


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

CubaMark wrote:
*It is quite obvious that the U.S. government does not want its citizens to see that Cuba is not the tropical gulag that the State Department and its media parrots try to portray.*

Yeah, since Castro had only 72 dissidents rounded up at the end of March, it's a land of milk and honey!


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

"Some 80 to 100 protesters were arrested. In East Lansing, Mich.," Last week - one small city

In San Francisco, police wearing helmets and carrying nightsticks arrested about 1,400 people Thursday as...'

Ah yes land of milk and honey.....NOT


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

macdoc,

Protesters and dissidents are two different things. The protesters arrested in the US were arrested for things like obstructing traffic and vandalism. The dissidents in Cuba were arrested for things like promoting ideas that are "forbidden" in Cuba.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

jfpoole,
what would happen if an American had an "idea" to create a Cuban travel agency? He startded chatting amongst his friends. Applied for a bank loan.

You think he might get a visit from a few gov't officials?

It's ok for Nike to have their shoes made by slaves (aka prisoners) in China and then sold to the U.S. market, but making a phone call to Cuba is verbotten.

Don't you see any hipocracy in this?


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

macspectrum,

What if someone had the "idea" to blow up a building? Do you think that person might not get a visit or two from the police?

I've never said that the US policy towards Cuba makes any sense. I just find it funny that people can call the US a facist regime, yet think Cuba's the bee's knees.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jfpoole:
*Protesters and dissidents are two different things. The protesters arrested in the US were arrested for things like obstructing traffic and vandalism. The dissidents in Cuba were arrested for things like promoting ideas that are "forbidden" in Cuba.*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Even more different than you think, compadre. The "dissidents" that were "rounded up" (more appropriately, arrested for specific illegal acts) are people who (a) are in some way receiving support, financial / material or otherwise, from the U.S. or Cuban exile groups abroad, or (b) have called for foreign businesses to stop investing in Cuba in an effort to bring about the downfall of the government.

Those who are in category (a) have allied themselves with a foreign power, one which has tried to assassinate the Cuban leader on multiple occasions, arranged an invasion in 1961 (remember the "Bay of Pigs"?), continues to illegally occupy part of Cuba's territory (Guantanamo naval base) and has conducted overt economic warfare against tiny Cuba for 40 years. Those in category (b) contribute to that economic warfare, which has resulted in harmful, if not deadly, effects within Cuba. The inability to purchase (among other things) some medicines and medical equipment on the world market is one of those effects. With the loss of the COMECON trading bloc in 1989, Cuba's only hope for survival was to acquire new trading partners and foreign investors. 

Although the majority of North Americans are unaware of the reality, the U.S. has been in a de facto state of undeclared war with Cuba for four decades. Why the hell should Cuba permit those who are cooperating with the enemy to carry out their objectives?

There is a third category, those "dissidents" who wish to see a political change arise naturally from within. These people, like those involved in the Varela project, are few in number and are very disorganized (sort of like the Communists in Canada and the U.S.). Can you imagine what the impact upon Canada would be if the international media gave Canadian communists the same "star treatment"? Although their numbers are so incredibly tiny in a nation of 12.5 million citizens, those who want to see U.S.-style "democracy" (which I saw with tongue firmly planted in cheek, as the memory of Florida will not fade easily) are sought after and presented to the world as "heroes". The international media has no time for those Cubans who are working every day to build socialism, those who work with their neighbours to solve local problems, who conduct mass consultations on national development challenges, etc. These people - the <u>real</u> heroes - are left to anonymity insofar as the U.S. media is concerned.

And so it goes... the U.S. pursues a culturally insensitive foreign policy against a nation is does not permit its own citizens to know first-hand. Interesting, eh?

M.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

I wonder how many countries would sign onto the Macnutt UN? The coalition of the willing? Sounds more like a US dictatorship of the world (adopt our form of democracy, under our definition, under our rules). Great "democratic" incentive to join. I doubt even the UK would participate in such a scheme.

No thanks, the current UN at least is inclusive and recognizes that more than one shade of colour exists.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I don' t think Cuba is the bee's knees by any means but I have some admiration for the nation and it's leader given the very oppressive stance the US has taken and the "demonizing" of Castro to US citizens. I also don't think the US is the "bee knees" either.
There is a lot of the "sovereign state" issue here regarding Cuba - it's hardly a threat to the US.
I think Canada's approach was far better. Trade and cultural exchange go a long way to making a safer and understanding world.

I ask again why the US is so hated around the world.?? There are reasons - there is history of meddling both covert and overt and often not very effectively.

Hey the Ugly American was written when - in the 50s.!!!
ALL imperial powers are often loathed and hated...and often for good reason.
Ask yourself why the US is.

I like Blair's stance on this - hopefully he and Powell together can get it right.

There was an interesting compilation in the Star today. It's one man's interesting statistics but some are...well you'll see
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp /cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1035780462384 

There are a few in here that should really make you think about sovereignty....even ours.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

of that article, i found the last 2 most telling and sad

10: Percentage of U.S. military spending that would provide global population with basic necessities.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: Number of countries that have used nuclear weapons against another country.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I agree on one but not the other. A better mix of arms and aid is needed.

BUT the scary one was 38% in the US support annexing Canada  ..as I was saying about Sovereignty, respect and lack thereof.
It's realllllly important...ask the Hawaiian royalty.
Water's next eh....


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

i chalked up the 38% to just ignorance.
however, maybe Canada is due for "liberation?"
after all, 38% can't wrong
we have all that fresh water that we are keeping to ourselves - all those forests, and farmland could be viewed as a potential threat
then there were those 2 gold medals we stole in olympic hockey
our aging sea kings we all know are an extreme aeial threat potential
and then there is those "french type" people just north of new england - hey, they are a potential threat - they speak French !!! 

U.S. HQ - SSI
macnutt will enjoy it


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Well...I've been away for a day, and this whole thing turns into a "Cuba vs The USA " thread.

Wooohooo!!







 

I'm up for it! (Mark...your thesis is gonna have to wait. Sorry buddy.)

Okay...where do I start?

"Cuba has lots of food and everyone is well-fed. They have award-winning agricultural practises"

What a load of cow manure!   

Cuba is, at present, spending more than a billion dollars US per year to _import_ basic foodstuffs in order to make up for the shortcomings of it's own terribly inefficient state-run farms. (most of this money is spent on AMERICAN grown food, by the way. The US is selling them tons of the stuff).

Any overabundance of food that Mark or anyone else has seen in Havana is as a result of private plots of farmland. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that Fidel dreamed up. These are farmers growing what they think will sell, and taking it to the local free market. It used to go on in a clandestine fashion...but now Fidel has realised that this is the only way to actually produce some of the greens and meat that the people desperately need. So he "legalised it".

He HAD to. The state-run and government planned farms were producing nothing but crop failures, and are some of the least efficient agricultural enterprises on the planet. Oddly enough, they were copied from the Soviet model...which also produced nothing but crop failures and inefficiency.

The Soviets were also unable to feed their own people without buying huge amounts of food on the open market with scarce hard dollars.(real money...not the local stuff) And they had masses of arable land. Cuba also has huge tracts of farmland and a climate that could produce almost anything in abundance. But it can't.

Funny about that,eh?

"Cubans have an excellent education system"
I'll agree with that assertion....but their schools are seriously lacking in a lot of things (paper, pencils, computers, textbooks that aren't thirty years out of date and air conditioning to relieve the 30+C heat. Just to mention a few) Many of the school and university buildings were built by the Russians in the seventies and eighties, and most are in a poor state of repair. Some are actually in danger of collapsing, and there is NO money to build any new ones. hasn't been since the Soviets pulled out ten years ago.

Not only that...but the fact that Cuban teachers earn less than fifty cents per day practically guarantees that many of them will head for another country as soon as the borders are opened up to free travel. Just to earn enough real cash to send back home so their families can live a bit better (a LOT better).

When that happens...and it will...then it's bye-bye to Cuba's fabulous education system.

Oh..and did I mention that when a Cuban graduates with several degrees and a head full of knowledge, he can't actually expect to get a job? Not enough of them to go around. Sorry.

Instead, the average Cuban with a graet education will end up driving a cab or working on a farm (the farmers are making out like bandits when allowed to grow their own crops without government interference and sell them on the open market) or they might get very lucky and be allowed to carry the luggage of rich touristas for tips in American dollars.

Or..if they are young and pretty...they might just take up an older profession. Lots of them do. It's everywhere.

"Cuba has an excellent medical system and universal free health care for everyone"

Quite true. I know this from firsthand experience. My girlfriend is a Cuban doctor of some note, and she has explained it all to me in great depth.

No anasthetics much of the time. The government decides how much every hospital gets and it rarely matches what they need. Lots of operations are done without any anasthetic at all. Think about that for a moment.

Most dental work is done without any sort of "freezing". They do good work, as long as you can hold still.  

The beds in my girlfriends hospital (main hospital in a city the size of Calgary) have mattresses that are about one inch thick. I never saw a chair with any sort of padding. You sit, or lay, on plywood.

No air conditioning, either. In stifling heat. 

Need a shot or vaccination? Great. One of the very first things she learned in medical school was how to re-sharpen a hypodermic needle. They get pretty dull after about fifty uses. So they have to re-sharpen them. Forget about using a brand new one. Doesn't happen. (I used to bring her big bags of hypos from Canada. The airline people thought I was an addict or something)

Most drugs are very scarce as well. They do have some of the latest equipment, though. I noticed a brand new X-Ray machine when I was waiting for her one day. "Pretty nice" I commented. She said "Yes..but no film to make it work". I asked her how come? Especially since it was a German built unit. Surely the evil Americans couldn't be responsible for this particular crucial shortage?

She just shrugged her shoulders and stroked her chin (it means "the bearded one" and is a silent reference to Fidel).

So sad. So _very_ sad.


My advice for anyone here who has _visited_ Cuba...even if they stayed for a month or two..is this:

Go there and live for a year or two. Every single day and night. Marry into a Cuban family. Share what they have and live with what they have to live with, day in and day out. Walk a few dozen miles in their shoes...and see how very tough it is.

Share their hopes and dreams...and be there when those hopes and dreams are squashed by a dictator who just won't give up. Who won't leave until he dies, and who won't admit that he has been terribly, horribly, wrong...about everything.

And then come back here and tell me a sunny tale about how "the Cubans have everything they really need".

Yeah..._right_.


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

macdoc wrote:
*There was an interesting compilation in the Star today. It's one man's interesting statistics but some are...well you'll see*

I'll see that some are wrong? Menon cites the Iraqi Body Count project as one of his sources, which has severe flaws with its methodology (its biased towards overcounting the number of civilian deaths). 

Kind of strange when the numbers coming out of the Iraqi Body Count are higher than those coming from the Iraqi government.

Update: I also tracked down the article about annexation. Here are some fun quotes:

<blockquote>Sands said he was somewhat puzzled by the "high minority" of Americans who said Canada should be annexed. However, he speculated the responses were an indication of goodwill and welcome towards Canadians should the government ever decide on its own that it wants to join the United States.

...

On the question of annexation by the United States, 19.9 per cent of Canadians said at that time that they would be in favour, while 76.5 per cent rejected the proposition. Another 3.6 per cent said they didn't know or refused to answer. 
</blockquote>

Doesn't sound all that sinister after all


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I also find it quite interesting that, whenever the US announces a "lottery" that will allow any Canadian to acquire US citizenship, there are HUGE lineups to apply for this.

The last one I was a part of (when renewing my US work visa) was estimated to be more than five thousand people. That was at ONE SINGLE border crossing. I asked the US border guard how many Canadians were currently in similar lineups while trying to take advantage of the lottery.

He said...offhandedly..."Oh, about four or five hundred thousand, at last count" 

And that was for a lottery that was scheduled to let in about twenty thousand people.

A similar lottery is conducted in Cuba each year. Twenty thousand are allowed to leave Cuba legally, for the US or any other country that will have them, each year.

Over a million people apply for this...every year.

Odd, that? Why would well educated people who have free medical care, and all the food that they can eat, and a free education for their children...be so very anxious to leave this government-funded paradise for a place that doesn't have any sort of guarantees of free medical care or education...and where you have to work to afford food?

And why would so many more of them risk their lives to escape this paradise by boat or raft or inner tube? Lately they have been stowing away in the wheelwells of high-altitude jet airliners and have been hijacking local short-run airliners with grenades, in order to get out of Cuba (two of these hijackings just this past month)

These hijackers know that they will be arrested for air piracy when they land in the USA. But still it goes on.

Wonder why?

You don't suppose that these Cubans know something that we don't...do you? You don't suppose that these desperate people simply can't stomach living in Fidel's "workers paradise" any longer..do you?

And why do more than a million Cubans apply to leave, legally, each year? Puzzling, isn't it?

And...better yet...why do so very many Canadians try to get work visas or citizenship in the United States each year? Droves of them. I've seen it with my own eyes. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads. They all WANT to be there. No question about it at all.

Strange, eh?


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

I was poking around the Amensty International website, and it appears they're strongly condeming the arrest of the dissidents in Cuba. AI seems to think that they may be "prisoners of conscience, detained solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association". 

Of course, what they did was "illegal" (under a law that makes, among other things, owning "subversive" material from the US government illegal), so I guess they got what they deserved, eh?


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

macnutt wrote:
*And...better yet...why do so very many Canadians try to get work visas or citizenship in the United States each year? Droves of them. I've seen it with my own eyes. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads. They all WANT to be there. No question about it at all.*

Most of the members of my class (Computer Science from Waterloo) accepted job offers in the United States after graduation. I got a number of strange looks from people when I told them I was staying in Canada....


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Economic immigration is not a judgement of the "goodness" of a country's political system.
Puerto Rico has been a Protectorate forever but 
"By 1980, one-third of working -age persons born in Puerto Rico had migrated to the mainland".
Cuz the opportunity to make money was there.
Same for Canadians.
The gold rush sponsored huge movements in search of wealth - bottom line to your argument..so what.
80% of those that "escaped" to Hong Kong from PRC returned because they couldn't make it in Hong Kong and were worse off. Again so what - economic immigration pressures will always be there.
Mexicans want to come to the US - do yo not think that if the direct border was to Canada there wouldn't be the same desire...of course there is.

Not a good way to order your arguments.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by macnutt:
*A similar lottery is conducted in Cuba each year. Twenty thousand are allowed to leave Cuba legally, for the US or any other country that will have them, each year. Over a million people apply for this...every year.*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Now, MacNutt... that's only part of the picture. Since 1994, Cuba and the U.S. have had an emigration agreement, a treaty if you like, that sets the annual migration visas at 20-thousand. Unfortunately, the U.S., as I've mentioned a few times in other threads, issues only a few thousand each year... while at the same time, granting instant citizenship to any Cuban who tries to emigrate by undertaking the dangerous crossing of the Florida Strait. This is incitement to suicide, which is at best ethically reprehensible, at worst is criminal.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Odd, that? Why would well educated people who have free medical care, and all the food that they can eat, and a free education for their children...be so very anxious to leave this government-funded paradise for a place that doesn't have any sort of guarantees of free medical care or education...and where you have to work to afford food?
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Why do so many Mexicans and Latin Americans try to cross the borders with Texas, California and New Mexico each year? Why are not the dozens (hundreds?) of deaths of these people annually merit the same media coverage / condemnation as Cuban would-be refugees? Why are we not saying that these people are "desperate to escape a poverty-stricken existence and an evil capitalist state"? Hypocrisy!

For those who haven't seen it, there is an excellent film called "El Norte" about an indigenous Guatemalan brother and sister who escape state violence (after the military wipes out their village) and journey north to Mexico, where they find a smuggler to help them across the border into the U.S. The story reveals that the "streets of gold" don't materialize, and tragedy ensues.

America exports its culture via television, movies, etc. The developing world consumes that, and sees how wonderful things are in America. They look around at their own relative poverty, and decide it's gotta be better than here... so they try to emigrate, legally or illegally.

Cubans have a large exile community which has become very powerful and prosperous (mainly because in the initial years of the Revolution, those who deserted the country were the upper class; educated doctors, teachers, engineers, etc. - one would expect such an exile community to "make it good"). Their propaganda efforts (e.g. via "Radio Marti and TV Marti, both of which violate international telecommunications laws by broadcasting into Cuban territory) talk incessantly about how great America is. Combine that with the transmission of cash from relatives abroad, and you have a very powerful lure.

I have yet to meet a Cuban emigré who has been prepared, or even anticipated, dealing with the realities of life in North America. "I have to pay to see a doctor? I have to pay to go to university? Rent is *how much*?!" etc. 

This desire to emigrate is not strange at all, MacNutt, it's perfectly logical within the human condition to want more than you have now. Combine that with a U.S. immigration policy that discriminates in favour of Cubans (just ask the Haitans), a propaganda machine that incessantly convinces them that the U.S. is "the place to realize your dreams," a deliberate failure by the U.S. to not fulfil its treaty obligations on emigrant visas, and the ongoing economic blockade which contributes to the austere lifestyle which Cubans are enduring... damn right they try to leave.

But they're no different than any other Latin American, or Canadian for that matter, as you pointed out yourself.

Since this is easily the third or fourth time I've had to explain this particular issue to you, why not print this page out, and paste it to the wall beside your computer, thereby saving me the effort in the future, ok?

M.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

I've many, many US friends. I've worked in the US. My daughter was born there. I wouldn't particularly wish to live there again but that's because we like Toronto. I guess I keep missing the point that the pro-invasion lobby people keep making. Canadians that are against the war are not necessarily anti-American (just like they are not pro-Hussein). They may well have a problem with Dubya but then it seems quite of few of the pro-war advocates have a problem with Jean Chretien.

Canada is my oasis in the desert. After living in the US and UK, this country clearly has its priorities right. I'm staying and I'll vote for anyone who believes in sustaining the Canadian way for tolerance, balance and freedom of expression.

P.S. That won't be Mr. George W. Harper....


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by macnutt:
*Cuba is, at present, spending more than a billion dollars US per year to import basic foodstuffs in order to make up for the shortcomings of it's own terribly inefficient state-run farms. (most of this money is spent on AMERICAN grown food, by the way. The US is selling them tons of the stuff).
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Manipulation of the facts, Gerry. You are omitting the other half of the equation... yes, Cuba is spending billions to import food and other products. It is also earning billions by exporting food and other products, as all nations do. Cubans, for example, do not eat the rice they produce; Cuba is able to sell domestically-produced rice at a high price, while importing rice from another country at a lower price, pocketing the difference. Still, Cuba has an overall net deficit, which is not uncommon... look at the USA!

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Any overabundance of food that Mark or anyone else has seen in Havana is as a result of private plots of farmland. 
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, private farmers *and* surplus output from cooperatives and other state farms. See this excellent summary (with photos) and the overall great site at http://www.cubamigos.com 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that Fidel dreamed up. 
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Quite right. It has everything to do with what the Cuban people, farmers, agriculture specialists, economists, etc., have decided is the proper strategy for food production and distribution. Those who criticise Cuba always think that Fidel is in absolute control of every little thing. That's precisely why U.S. policy toward Cuba has been a failure, and why y'all will be very surprised when he finally does depart this earth and the system doesn't switch to your vision of a free-market multiparty "democracy".

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
The Soviets were also unable to feed their own people without buying huge amounts of food on the open market with scarce hard dollars
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup - there it is. Cuba is just the Soviet Union with palm trees. No awarness at all of the historical specificities that made Cuba what it is today, the cultural differences, the systematic uniqueness... terrible lack of analysis, there, amigo...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
"Cubans have an excellent education system"
I'll agree with that assertion....but their schools are seriously lacking in a lot of things (paper, pencils, computers, textbooks that aren't thirty years out of date and air conditioning to relieve the 30+C heat. Just to mention a few) 
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup, materials are in short supply, it's true. But the teachers continue to teach, the students continue to learn, and to outpace all of its neighbours in educational achievement. 

Oh, and the 30+ degrees you mentioned? While you and I might wilt under the Cuban sun, those who have grown up in that climate are accustomed to it, know how to cope with it, and besides... it's only a problem for the summer months, when everything stops. 

I also doubt that Haitian and Jamaican schools have air conditioners in every school running 24/7, do they?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Not only that...but the fact that Cuban teachers earn less than fifty cents per day practically guarantees that many of them will head for another country as soon as the borders are opened up to free travel. 
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The 'free travel' thing I've already addressed. The "fifty cents per day" assertion is bogus if you don't also come clean with value of the provisions of the Revolution in terms of housing, education, subsidized foodstuffs, ridiculously low rent (for those who don't already own their homes), etc. It's like saying Steve Jobs only made $1 last year.... 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Oh..and did I mention that when a Cuban graduates with several degrees and a head full of knowledge, he can't actually expect to get a job? Not enough of them to go around. Sorry.
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Continuing with the half-pictures, MacNutt. Cuba's struggle with unemployment is no different than any other countries. Still, on December 21st (just a few months ago, Cuba's official unemployment rate was 3.3%. I just checked the Statistics Canada site, and we're currently at 7.3% (March 2003 figures).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Instead, the average Cuban with a graet education will end up driving a cab 
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is one of the major challenges for the economic adjustment that Cuba is going through, as tourism now is the #1 foreign-exchange earner (surpassing sugar and tobacco) and represents a huge draw for the population... many people are giving up their jobs for a chance to hustle tourists, or work as waitstaff, cab drivers or entertainers for the U.S. dollar (or, increasingly, the Euro). What has been encouraging are the number of Cubans who are choosing to remain in their professions.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
Or..if they are young and pretty...they might just take up an older profession. Lots of them do. It's everywhere.
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, it is. Just like it's in NYC, Vancouver, Halifax, Toronto, London, Paris.... shall I go on? This reminds me of that old bastard Jesse Helms and his henchmen, who (among others) remarked on the re-emergence of prostitution as a social phenomenon during the worst years of Cuba's economic crisis in the early-to-mid-1990s: "Castro is selling Cuban women!". Cuba's various political and social organizations had a helluva time trying to come up with a way to deal with this issue, since it had been all-but eliminated through employment initiatives and education since 1959. So when Cuba passed laws to curb prostitution, and police began charging these public-health menaces, critics abroad said "Castro is repressing Cuban women!". Cuba just couldn't win for trying... 

I recommend the excellent article by Karen Wald: "Popes, Prostitutes and Prisoners" Karen, an American journalist, has lived in Cuba for 20 years, raising two children there. One has gone on to become a doctor in inner-city Havana. The other was, last I heard, an environmental lawyer in the U.S. Great perspective, from someone who lives with and cares a great deal about Cubans.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
No anasthetics much of the time. The government decides how much every hospital gets and it rarely matches what they need. Lots of operations are done without any anasthetic at all. Think about that for a moment.
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are certainly good at twisting a phrase, of saying things that say one thing but really mean another. "The government" (which in this case is the ministry of health, but your phrasing implies something sinister) decides how to distribute the anaesthetic that Cuba is able to buy with its limited foreign exchange (can't use pesos on the world markets). There is nothing discriminatory about it... they send it where it's needed, trying to ensure that the population is served as best they can. Your anecdotes simply reinforce my assertion that the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba continues to have disastrous and cruel repercussions for average Cubans. For a more comprehensive examination of the effects of the blockade, see this report. And  this excellent analysis.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>*
I noticed a brand new X-Ray machine when I was waiting for her one day. "Pretty nice" I commented. She said "Yes..but no film to make it work". I asked her how come? Especially since it was a German built unit. Surely the evil Americans couldn't be responsible for this particular crucial shortage?

She just shrugged her shoulders and stroked her chin (it means "the bearded one" and is a silent reference to Fidel).
*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What the hell does that mean? You just put that out there, leave it hanging, and let our imaginations insert something horrible, like evil Fidel hoarding all the German x-ray film in his private underground palace... What a crock!

More likely this is the result of another well-intentioned but badly-implemented medical donation scheme from a foreign NGO. I should know, our group has done this too by not thinking things through. Raise money or secure a donation of equipment, and send it off - job well done. Oops. Forgot the raw materials / spare parts / stuff that one needs to make it work. Like sending down a crate full of new laserprinters, but not sending the toner cartridges. Cubans just shake their heads at stuff like that.

Or maybe it's like the German firm that used to sell Cuba pacemakers (in fact, was Cuba's only supplier). It was bought by an American medical equipment company. No more pacemakers from that source. Cuba had to go elsewhere. THAT is the reality of the blockade.

Cuba is doing the best it can in the face of massive hostility from its neighbour to the north. Despite the pressures, it provides for its citizens an adequate - but little more - standard of living, with opportunities other nations can not (or will not) provide. It pursues its own unique development path, while undertaking charitable works and acts of solidarity around the world, including medical missions to Africa, Haiti and Latin America; scholarships to students from around the world, *including low-income students from the U.S. who want to become doctors*. It has created some of the world's *only* vaccinations against certain forms of meningitis and hepatitis, which it sells *at cost* to the developing world, and *for profit* to countries that can afford it.

Funny, isn't it, MacNutt? You see disaster and I see proud success. Reality can be fluid....

M.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Thank you Mark that was terrific.

BTW Macnutt most foreign trained doctors end up driving cab here too and we have a shortage.

Girls here end up as prostitutes and that's really unfortunate given the level of wealth here.

Evaluating Cuba without taking into account the economic blockade is ridiculous. You've got a better brain than to buy into that .

You are being an ideologue in an era when the very concept is becoming dated.

There are multiple forms of human association and governance and diverse models within a single economic entity such as Ontario.

Just as nature takes multiple approachs to an ecological niche diversity of method and models is critical to a functional and safe world.

That makes for progress instead of repeating, and living in, the past.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

It's late and I don't have time to reply in kind to Mark's well written reply right now...but I will make a few quick points.

Yes...a lot of Cuba's food is exported. We had bottled fruit juice at wellsite from a company called "Tropical Isle". It was made in Israel (!?) from Cuban-grown fruit and was only available for hard currency back in Cuba. That means that most Cubans can't buy it. I never saw it for sale at any regular Cuban market (they don't have grocery stores as we know them). I also never saw much fruit for sale, for that matter. I asked a farmer about this and he said that "Fidel sells it all to the foreigners. There is not much left for us"

Hmmmmm....

Tobacco is an interesting case. It is native to Cuba, and is such a prominent plant that it is featured on some of the money.

But most Cubans have never seen a real Cuban cigar. I showed a thirty year old Cuban roughneck a box of Uppmans coronas that I had bought and he told me he had never actually seen a real box of cigars before. Waayyyy beyond his paycheck.

Hmmmmm...

As for prostitution, it has gotten so very bad in recent years that Fidel has had to make some new laws to try and curb it. He has been partially sucessful in Havana...at least it's not so noticeable as it once was...but it is rampant in most of the rest of the country. Yes, it goes on in most major cities in Canada and elsewhere, as it always has. But you have no idea what it's like in Cuba. It seems like everywhere I went...even with my girlfriend...I was being approached by young girls. EVERYWHERE! All of the time! And I am, as I have noted, severely ugly.

When I was living in las Tunas, one of the prettiest girls in town, who was all of seventeen, married a 72 year old German who was a frequent visitor to that area. He was not rich (a retired fisherman). Want to bet she was in love? Or was it a bit of desperation? This sort of thing is going on all the time in that poor land.

And, finally.....

Yes Mark, you've made the very same case for "economic immigration" several times, and I don't need to print it out to remember. I can almost recite it by now.

I have always discounted it because its pure hogwash. Ideologically driven nonsense.

Sure Mexicans and Puerto Ricans etc. are all trying to get a better life. Some of them resort to radical measures to get to the land of wealth, no doubt about it.

But very few of them are stowing away in the wheelwells of high altitude jetliners...or hijacking domestic airliners with grenades...or building rafts to float across a treacherous and shark-infested 90 miles of open ocean to do it.

And surprisingly few of their athletes ever defect to Canada or the US when allowed to travel to these places for competition. Pretty much none, actually.

Not only that, Cubans are well-known for defecting to a whole range of countries, sometimes in large numbers, whenever they are allowed out of the sight of their minders. Often when attending institutes of higher education or even when visiting as dignitaries. Musicians are quite prone to this as well.

Odd, that? It wouldn't seem to have very much to do with any sort of special provision made by the US. Especially when many of these defectors will never actually end up in the States. 

They just seem to want _OUT_. Any way they can get out.

Which is especially strange when you compare them to Mexican or Puerto Rican or Salvadoran refugees. Cuba, after all, has (supposedly) all this abundant food and great schools and excellent medical care. It's obviously waaayyy better than any of the other countries that are producing refugees.

So why do so very many more Cubans seem to be ready to risk life and limb to leave? When they have everything they really need at home?

I can see wanting to leave some sort of poor Central American country for the USA. I mean, no food, crappy medical care, etc....yeah...let me out!

But why leave Cuba? And why leave it for so many other countries other than the US? Places that don't guarantee anything. No subsidised food or medical or housing?

And...Mark...here's the sixty-four dollar question:

Why do so few of them ever go back? Amost none, really. Except as rich visitors many years after the fact, ready to bestow great gifts upon their poverty-ridden families that had to stay behind. I've ridden for six hours at a time on jets with several Cubans who had left for other countries, and then were heading back for a visit.

(This has happened MANY times, by the way.)

They all had some interesting stories, lemme tell ya.

And not a blessed one of em ever wanted to live under Fidels bootheel ever again. Not ever.

Most said they would love to move back, "after the bearded one is muerte". Not before. They'd had their fill of it. So have most of the Cubans I met while living there. They won't tell you this until they really know you. Probably out of fear. There certainly is enough of that to go around. Probably the only thing that is truly in abundance on that little island.

Che Guevara's most famous quote was "I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees".

Right now, most Cubans will tell you that they are living on their knees. 

Too bad it all went so horribly wrong.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt slipped up:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Waayyyy beyond his *paycheck.* <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That settles it. macnutt is a CIA operative. You would think "they" would teach you "Canadian" before being set up at your listening post in SSI.

Yep, I've seen the radio antenna farm near Langley, BC, on Canadian soil that is used by the aforementioned 3-letter company. Why on Canadian soil you ask? So that it does not fall under any pesky U.S. politician's nose to start asking "those" kind of questions.

Tell me the story of the "Lone Gunman theory" in the JFK assassination. Uh oh, who is knocking at my door at this hour?


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

It was Woody Harrellson's dad, on the grassy knoll. Oswald couldn't have hit the ground with his hat, let alone made three good shots like that in record time.

Don't ask me how I know.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt observed:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Oswald couldn't have hit the ground with his hat, let alone made three good shots like that in record time.

Don't ask me how I know. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Because it's easy to find, for anyone that pokes around, that there is no way anyone could have fired off 3 shots, that quickly, with that rifle with world class accuracy.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Hence the escalation of salmon firing technology - he has ACCESS  

That teleportation cannon from the ahem "ship" at Groom Lake produced verrrry interesting capabilities.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macdoc,
Groom Lake is so "eighties."

The U.S. military has moved the operations of said non-existant base to another base north west of the old location, while at the same time expanding the restricted area around the old place just for fun.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Actually...all of that stuff has moved to a secret base in southern Colorado. Area 51 got too "hot".   

But some of it has been moved back to Nevada. To a place called Papoose Lake. Plus another spot that can't be named. (it's in Scotland)







 

WooHoo...scary scary!  

(the seriously paranoid are updating their databases as we speak. yikes!)


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Say....wanna know who killed Stalin? Who _really_ shot Martin Luther King? How Lenin died, and what he said on his deathbed?!??

Ever wonder what was up with that Marilyn Monroe "suicide"?? Did Sirhan Sirhan actually shoot Robert Kennedy...or was it all a plot?? And what the heck really happened at Roswell in 1947?

Did David Bloom REALLY die of "natural causes" at age 39 while reporting in Iraq....or did he come across something terribly sinister that would expose George W. Bush for the devil spawn that he really is??

No problem. As a former CIA operative I can tell you, chapter and verse.  









Just mail me fifty bucks (Per conspiracy. US funds, of course.) and I'll e-mail you all of the details.

Honest.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

in your case that would be U.S. $50 of course.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Naturally. I wouldn't take any sort of "monopoly money" for data that was so sensitive. Don't be daft, lad.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Don't be daft, lad. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I see the Glenlivet is weaving its "magic."


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

I recall reading somewhere, I have no citation so I cannot attest to the accuracy of my statement, that a majority of people polled regarding what time in the past they would go back to in a time machine would be Nov.22nd, 1963. Oddly enough, the rationale was to have a video camera ready to try and film actually what did happen to Kennedy.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

Hmmm... wouldn't you want to intervene in some way? Not sure how though. "Hi, I'm from 2003. The US has just invaded Iraq, I have 4,000 songs in my pocket and President Kennedy will be shot today." Next.... There again, who knows what would have happened had JFK lived?


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

If JFK had lived any longer we would be in a very different place today. Possibly even a very worse place. He was a loose cannon with major mafia ties and a thirst for sleazy women, after all. In a few short years he made a big splash...and some serious errors in judgement. He did what we wanted him to do...and it is much better that we remember him as a photogenic martyr than what he would have become had he stayed in office.

As for "having 4 thousand songs in your pocket" when you go back in time...

Just ask gordguide. You are specifically prohibited from taking any sort of modern technology back. It could totally screw up the timeline and affect pretty much everything.

It's just NOT DONE. Honest.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

JFK living on is unknowable - indeed Camelot was an idea with marginal underpinnings that may well have become very tarnished in a normal term for a president.

His death powered much of a generation - to the moon for one such inspiration.
I fail to see your "mafia comment" as his brother who carried on and was also assassinated was very instrumental in starting the slow but steady erosionof organized crime in America and the assassination had elements of a organized crime "hit".

He represented the "young generation" - change, style away from the "eminence grise" of the past presidential style.

He represented a "friction point" between the "establishment" of the 50's and the rebellion of the 60s and perhaps we will never know what of those shift in the US political environment either at home or abroad sponsored his death.
It was a more sober and focused America after his death - it's hard to know how MUCH the "idea" Kennedy represented - his speeches were inspiring - powered the emerging hyper -power but for certain it had an impact.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

maqcdoc, ummmm, you are forgetting the macnutt rule of Presidential honour. Republican - world hero. Democrat - cheese-eating, commie loving dirt bag.










Just thank your lucky stars that Rummie is too old to ever run.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

re: death of a generation
take into account the assasinations of:
JFK
RFK
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
and
58,000 U.S. military personnel killed in Vietnam
students killed at Kent State

truly the death of a generation


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

macspectrum...it was definitely a pivotal time in history that we lived through, back then. So many assasinations, so much discord and unrest...

...and with the Cold War and the threat of nuclear anniliation hanging over all of our heads. Duck and cover!!







  

It's no wonder a whole generation escaped into hard drugs and free sex. We didn't think we were going to see tomorrow! What else was there?


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Macdoc....

John F Kennedy was definitely an inspirational figure in American, and world, history. 

He challenged us to be better than we were, to strive for things that were beyond our reach...and he stared down the Soviets at a crucial moment, despite the fact that they were seen to be the military equals of the US at that time in history.

We owe him a lot.

But...we should also note that some of his fame is because he was extremely photogenic, and we should also note that he was a notorious womaiser who shared some of his extra-marital female company with known mafia leaders, and that he came from a family that made it's fortune by selling bootleg alcohol (from _CANADA_, no less!) during a period when that trade was illegal, and made that huge fortune with the co-operation of most of the big Mafia bosses of the day.

Those strong mob ties were utilised by his father Joe Kennedy when John F Kennedy was trying to get elected as President of the United States. It was the closest race in the history of the country, and Joe knew that a few thousand votes either way, could make the difference.

He and JFK met with the top mob bosses and convinced them to use their control of the Big Unions to stuff the ballot boxes in several jurisdictions, in return for an unspoken "amnesty" from persecution by the Federal government.

The Mafia Dons delivered....and JFK was elected by the slimmest margin in US electoral history. This is all a matter of public record...and numerous books on the subject have exposed the electoral fraud by the Mafia-controlled Unions.

Trouble is....JFK's little brother was set up as Attorney General in the new Democratic Government and he had a mission.

To rid the US of the big Italian crime gangs. His older brother and dad encouraged him in this quest....possibly hoping that any complicity in the scam election would dissappear with the Mafia bosses, once they were arrested. Once this little "loose end" was cleared up...then a whole new political dynasty could assume it's rightful place on the world stage. 

First JFK...then RFK...then Teddy...and then some of the many children of the Kennedy family. It would go on forever and ever! That was Joe Kennedy's plan and it had started back in the early days of the last century.


But....it got nipped in the bud on a coolish day in November of 1963 in Dallas Texas.

And none of the rest of the family ever really hit the big time, after that fateful moment. RFK certainly _could_ have....but another timely shooting took him out of the game.

Time and publicity took care of the rest of the family's aspirations of greatness....and, truth be told...they are a much-tarnished bunch these days. We are also very aware of JFK's many bad decisions. Ones that could have sent us back to the dark ages at a moments notice.

-The Nuclear Confrontation with the Soviets. It could easily have gone the other way, with Armageddon as the result.

-The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Same possible result...and his refusal to back up the troops he had sent into the field is still regarded in several countries as a major betrayal. Not the first for the Kennedy clan, by the way!

-The Escalation of the Vietnam war. It was a French problem, not an American one, before John F Kennedy stepped in and made some fateful decisions. Decisions that would kill tens of thousands of people and end in tears, without having any clear positive end result.

...there was a lot more on the table, but he was taken out before he could make any more messes. Thank goodness.

Judging from what we now know about JFK, RFK, Teddy Kennedy, and all the rest of them, we might take pause before we proclaim them to be members of some sort of wondrous "Camelot".

We can only wonder how things might have been.

And...perhaps...be safe in the knowledge that we will never really know. And also be very happy that we were never forced to live in the reality that these larger-than-life, and _terribly flawed_ potential "leaders" might have inflicted upon us all.

Duck and _COVER_!!


----------



## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

And finally, Jwoodget....

Interesting that I always seem to back the Republicans on almost everything they do, isn't it?

Do you think that I do this because of some blind loyalty to their ideology?

Or is it possible that the Republican/right wing way of making decisions and policies just seem to _work_...and the Democrat/leftist way of doing things just seems to be always destined to failure?

It would certainly seem to be that way once you take a good hard look at recent world history. Even if you go back several decades, one side seems to be right about things a LOT more than the other.

Especially when _sustainability_ is factored into the whole equation. It's pretty much a hands-down-one-sided argument when you look at it that way.

It takes a massive amount of "spin"...and some serious imagination, to think that the Democrat/leftist side has any credence at all.

Care to prove me wrong?

Fine then. I'm listening. Fly at it.

Really.


----------



## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)

"Care to prove me wrong?" 

Macnutt, again you throw down the same old glove before smelling it.








We know where it's been and how long it's been around. 
We have not the protective gear to take it up.

Your loyalty is obviously blind since you can't see that you are in the wrong place for a cause that has no base in this country. 

A one party state (Republican) is obviously your political wet dream as your rabid expressions of hatred toward democratic ideals not in line with your militaristic view indicate.

There is however hope for your cause; 
click on the URL below, 
get out the snifter and the '59 Freedom Armagnac, 
inhale the Freedom Fumes, 
savour the palette 
and wait for the dial-up to bring you your comrades in arms.

http://www.unitednorthamerica.org/ 

You have a talent for using your political ideals as gagging stink bombs with your obvious infatuation with violence as a problem solver and no ability to make them attractive to anyone but the "Freddy's Back!" types.

Or was that the lonely guy ranting at the other end of the bar again.  

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! 

GUN$ 'R U$A

This is the #1 selling CD-ROM in the Middle East:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1930422032/ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/103-5607826-4571804#product-details


----------



## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt mused:


> Or is it possible that the Republican/right wing way of making decisions and policies just seem to work...and the Democrat/leftist way of doing things just seems to be always destined to failure?


The 40 million Americans without health insurance and the Americans who come across into Canada to fill their Rx may think you're wrong.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Of course you're right, macspectrum. How silly of me.  

And there are absolutely _no_ Canadians sent down to the US for medical care by our own much-vaunted system, because of lineups or lack of staff or bed closures...right?









I mean, hey, our system is all that is pure and good...and it's _totally_ sustainable without bankrupting all of us....right?

Dream on. :


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

BTW macello...one more thing on this subject. it's purely anecdotal, but it is similar to a thousand other stories we have heard over the last decade or so.

My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995. He was told that he would be in serious trouble within eight or nine months, and terminal within a year and a half....it was that bad.

Trouble was, there was at least an eighteen month waiting list for treatment under the government funded system. Nothing he could possibly do would get him an earlier treatment date. And he TRIED, lemme tell ya.

Note: This was under an NDP/left Provincial Government who had already been in power for half a decade. Cuts had nothing to do with the waiting lists. It was also right in the middle of the biggest economic boom that the western world has ever known. There should have been enough spare cash to go around...don't you think?


Instead, my dad went down to Bellingham Washington, three times per week at his own expense and got treatment. No waiting lines down there at all. Just a lot of Canadians who were also trying to stay alive when their own system had failed them.

He endured some pretty painful three-hour drives...each way...for a couple of months. Then he got better.

Over a year later, just after he had gone down for his final post treatment checkup, he got a call from BC Med. They asked his wife if he was still among the living. She said yes. They then said "well...we can get him in for treatment some time in the next month or two. We're putting him on the short list".

I believe she told them just exactly where to stuff their short list. She may have shared a few other pleasantries with them at the same time (Scots don't mince words when riled. Good thing she couldn't get her hands around his throatl!)

The system, in short, is totally dysfunctional and unsustainable. Cuts are a SYMPTOM of what's wrong...not the reason for it.

And no amount of money...that we don't have...will fix what is wrong with it.

This is a basic reality that many of us have yet to come to grips with. Too bad. You have to actually _identify_ a problem before you can start to fix it.

Delay and denial just makes it worse. Wait and see.


----------



## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)

macnutt

Thirty million Americans in your dad's situation would have died turned away from treatment in the U$ for lack of funds and forty million more would have to refuse treatment so as not to financially ruin the lives of their families and loved ones. 

Tories are open about their use of crisis manufacturing to create conditions for a U$ system that would have killed your dad for reasons of unemployment and the resulting automatic loss of insurance or a poor credit rating or simple poverty. With the US health system your dad has no value other than the contents of his wallet.

In Canada we like to help each other. 
In the U$ only a sucker helps others.

Here's some math. Something that we have never seen from you.

Mike Harris' "revolution" has been a abject failure both fiscally and socially, even on the Ontario Conservatives' own terms. 

The Common Sense Revolution was supposed to be about fiscal responsibility and reducing the deficit. Yet despite the longest continuous economic expansion in the province's history, Ontario's public debt has increased by $20 billion under the Tories. Half of that increase was incurred to pay for tax cuts granted before the books had been balanced. 

The Common Sense Revolution was supposed to be about tax relief for average families. In fact, most of the benefits of the tax cuts went to the wealthiest 20% of the population, and to profitable corporations. For most people, the tax cuts- looking a lot smaller than advertised-have been gobbled up by user fees and increased costs to provide services privately instead of publicly. 

In the process, Ontario's revenue base has been slashed by 20%. A recent estimate by the Federal Department of Finance puts the impact of provincially-initiated corporate and personal income tax cuts at $12.3 billion for 2002-03. The Ontario Alternative Budget estimates the impact of all Ontario tax cuts, including corporate property tax cuts and employer health tax cuts, at $13.4 billion. No matter how you slice it, that's a lot of missing revenue. 

This huge hole in government revenue is reflected directly in a large and growing public services deficit. In the elementary and secondary education system, the effects of over $2 billion in cuts since 1995 are being felt across the province in school closures, program cuts, and waiting lists for special education programs. Parents are being asked to fundraise for books and gym equipment. Physical education programs are being restricted. And many school boards, having hit the wall financially, will operate deficits in 2002-03 in defiance of the Education Act. 

After closing hospitals and laying off nurses, the government has gone on a hospital building spree and created an emergency program to deal with a shortage of nurses. Waiting lists for basic services are growing, and emergency rooms are routinely closed to new patients arriving by ambulance.

Tory cutbacks have resulted in the recent collapse of the cancer and elective surgery facilities with so few resources left
for the care and treatment of the SARS outbreak.

Statistics:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Listen up macello! The _TORIES_ and their crisis-manufacturing had absolutely NOTHING to do with my dads situation. He was living in an NDP/LEFTIST province at the time! One that had never actaually had a Tory Government, by the way. And the Federal Health care transfer payment cutbacks were a result of CHRETIEN LIBERAL policy.   

Get your head out of the glue bag. The simple reality is that no government, anywhere can figure out how to pay for our current Canadian health care system. And all of the tripe that is put out by union-funded leftist "think-tanks" like the one you quoted will not change that basic reality. Sorry if you can't grasp that simple fact.

On the other hand, my dad commented that most of the people in the waiting room for treatment at the cancer clinic in Washington State were simple working folks. A whole PILE of them were Canadians, by the way!

My dad is not rich. He was in a Union for almost forty years and lives in a condo on a pension. He paid for the treatment out of his own pocket because the Canadian system had condemned him to an early death. The total cost amounted to not much more than the value of a cheap car. Less than five grand.

When I worked in the US we all had company sponsored medical plans. Pretty much everybody does. They don't cover everything....and nobody thinks that medical care is "free" the way that we do in Canada.

That's why the smart ones pay a bit more and have several overlapping plans. Medical care in the US is excellent, and there are no lineups.

If you are dirt poor, then there are hospitals that will take you in and fix you up. Ever wonder how all the gunshot victims in the inner cities get treatment? Do you think they have medical insurance? Are they put out on the street to die? How do they get care then?

The US government pays for it...that's how. They call it "Medicare" and they were using that word LONG before anyone in Canada ever even thought about it.  

The shortfall comes from people who choose to have no medical insurance, or have too little. Perhaps they're saving for the purchase of their first house, or are working at a crappy job and don't qualify for government paid medicare. Or maybe they're just under-insured. Rollin the dice and hoping for the best.

That's the way it is.

And...unlike our failing system here in Canada, they are not bankrupting themselves trying to provide something that no country anywhere has been able to provide.

And they don't have to wait in line until they die. They usually get treatment right away.

That must be why Canada sends thousands of sick people down there every year. Our system can't handle the load right now. Perish the thought of what will happen in a few short years, when the baby boomers start to overload an already overloaded system.

And nothing that the "Center for Policy Alternatives" can conjure up will change that simple fact.

Wait and see.


----------



## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

macnutt,

Nothing but anecdote and boilerplate; neither inform.


----------



## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)

macnutt,

"And...unlike our failing system here in Canada, they are not bankrupting themselves trying to provide something that no country anywhere has been able to provide."

Bad sales pitch macnutt. Do I $mell something?

You have a talent for using your political ideals as gagging stink bombs.  

For-Profit Health Care: 
Expensive, Inefficient and Inequitable 

Dr. Arnold S. Relman, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Emeritus Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Presentation to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. 

"most of the current problems of the U. S. system - and they are numerous - result from the growing encroachment of private for-profit ownership and competitive markets on a sector of our economy that properly belongs in the public domain. No health care system in the industrialized world is as heavily commercialized as ours, and none is as expensive, inefficient, and inequitable -- or as unpopular. Indeed, just about the only parts of U. S. society happy with our current market-driven health care system are the owners and investors in the for-profit industries now living off the system."

http://www.healthcoalition.ca/relman.html


WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Hospitals should expect Medicare payment cuts next year as lawmakers try to hold down the program's spending, Medicare's director said Friday. 

A report released earlier this week showed that Medicare spending rose 8.5 percent last year, 2 percent faster than analysts had expected. Much of the acceleration in spending was blamed on increased hospital costs, which rose nearly 10 percent. 

Hospitals have maintained that despite the rises in cost, they need more federal money to care for an aging population and to provide medical care to uninsured individuals and others who cannot pay for their own treatments. 

The U.S. House narrowly passed a fiscal 2004 budget resolution late Thursday night that included cuts to the Medicaid low-income public health insurance program. 

The American Hospital Association, which represents both non-profit and for-profit hospitals, issued a statement saying that the cuts threaten to diminish clinical services for poor and elderly patients. 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_12072.html


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## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

macnutt, said:
"because of lineups or lack of staff or bed closures...right?"

Neo-Con wet dream Mike "Custer" Harris fired 9,100 hospital staff in '93 
and closed 5,700 beds In '94. 
Your hero .... eh? ... do the math! 

macnutt,said:
"it's totally sustainable without bankrupting all of us....right?"

*IMF pegs Canada as Leader in G7.* 
Wednesday, April 09, 2003 

"The Canadian economy remains a bright spot on the world's economic landscape, even as global growth prospects remain "subdued" in the face of a U.S.-led war in Iraq, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday." 

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/RTGAM/20030409/wbimfcanada0409

*US Blames Deficits on Others.*
April 4, 2003

"US Treasury Secretary John Snow tried to deflect international criticism of rising United States trade and budget deficits, blaming them in part on slow growth in Japan and Europe. 

Some G7 officials and US economists have warned that a return to simultaneous budget and trade gaps threatens the US economy with 1980s-style rising debt, falling foreign investment and lacklustre growth. 

Tax cuts would cause the budget deficit to grow while doing little to boost the economy, a group of 10 Nobel laureate economists, including Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, said in February after Mr Bush unveiled his plan. 

The International Monetary Fund, in its most recent outlook, cited the US current account deficit as a "vulnerability" in the global economy that remains a "serious concern" because growth in Japan and Europe aren't offsetting the weakness in the world's largest economy. 

The government's budget, after four years of surpluses, showed a deficit of $US158 billion in fiscal 2002 and will be in deficit through 2007, according to the White House. "

http://afr.com/world/2003/04/14/FFXO9VWWFED.html

macnutt, you've got math to do.

For myself I am happier this year than ever to financially sustain out enlightened Liberal government if only because it is also your obligation. You could always send any surplus funds to: (U$ funds only)

Domain: canadiansforbush.com
Registrant ( BTL13-IYD-REG )
Bee & Tee, LLC.
Bee & Tee, LLC.
[email protected]
P.O. Box 9132
*Salt Lake City, Utah 84109 US* 
+1.8014865066 

or:

Administrative Contact: 
Private, Registration CANADIANSFORBUSH.ORG @domainsbyproxy.com 
Domains by Proxy, Inc. 
15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 
PMB353 
*Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States *
(480) 624-2599


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

macello....

I wonder why evil old Mike Harris canned so many hospital workers? Probably out of meanness, right? A bad, bad man...we are soooo much better off, now that he's gone.Right?

I also wonder why so many other Provincial Premiers are doing similar cuts. Just a trend, I suppose. Or a "hidden right-wing agenda" or something?

Oddly enough, the very first subject all of the Premiers talk about at their conferences is "what the heck do we do about health care...and how the HECK do we pay for it?"

Canadian style health care is known as "the monster that ate the budget" by all and sundry in power. No matter if they're left or right. Because nobody can figure out how to pay for it. Not even close.

And THAT'S before the big population bulge known as the "baby boomers" really start to hit old age. The damn thing is eating half the budget in most Provinces (more than half in some places)...wonder how long we can sustain it when the bills go up by fifty or sixty per cent?

One of us, it seems, certainly needs to do some remedial math.









Better start studying.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

> The U.S. House narrowly passed a fiscal 2004 budget resolution late Thursday night that included cuts to the Medicaid low-income public health insurance program.


Where is the AARP when this kind of stuff happens? Have they made a statement?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Macnutt you are seriously out of step again  

The health care system is being rebuilt after a necessary housekeeping exercise that went to far by both the Feds and the Conservatives.

Here is a world sampling

Sweden has fully funded health care system

"Sweden is a parliamentary democracy with constitutional monarchy and local government. Elections are held on central, regional and local level every fourth year. Sweden has a decentralized health care system, with 20 County Councils (including two regions) and the municipal of Gotland who are responsible for financing and providing heath care services to the entire population."

Singapore
"The Government ensures that good and affordable basic medical services are made available to all Singaporeans through the provision of heavily subsidised medical services at the public hospitals and government clinics. The basic medical package will reflect good, up-to-date medical practice, which is cost-effective and of proven value. But it will not provide the latest and best of everything. The treatment will be delivered without frills by trained personnel using appropriate facilities. It will exclude non-essential or cosmetic services, experimental drugs and procedures of unproven value. All private hospitals, medical clinics, clinical laboratories and nursing homes are required to maintain a good standard of medical services through licensing by the Ministry of Health."

Costa Rica has free health care.
"The healthcare system in Costa Rica is ranked among the top 20 in the world."

South Africa has free primary healthcare

There are many many others.

Macnutt ...is it that much of a time warp where you are living??


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

"If you have money, you have a better chance to live. No money, you die."
- Smart Citizens Requesting Equal Waiting
(SCREW)


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Macdoc, I have always condended that the death of RFK was a greater loss to America than the loss of JFK. RFK was truly needed in 1968, and I feel that the US would never have become so deeply involved in Vietnam had he become president. Still, one can only wonder..................


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

LBJ certainly escalated matters.
One is left to wonder if JFK would have taken on the military-industrial complex and pulled troops out of Vietnam as some have hypothesized was the reason for his assissination.
Both brothers were certainly not shining examples of "family values" and perhaps history remembers them more fondly due to their untimely deaths.


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## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

The American Right Wing forever lost it's moral imperative in 1980 when Jimmy Baker said to Jessica Hahn "when you help the shepherd you help the flock".

Thanks Macdoc for the information on other systems. Not something freely available in the US.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Odd, that. My youngest brother is married to a Swedish girl and they visit that country quite regularly. He tells me that, over the last ten years, a LOT of privatisation has taken place in Swedish health care. There are private clinics for just about everything, and most people prefer them to waiting in line for the government-run ones. Sound familiar?

Also...they had to do this. Nobody could figure out how to fund the "total coverage" government system. There was, apparently, a LOT of debate about this in the newspapers, and a lot of shouting and finger-pointing...but a mixed private/public system is now a reality in that quintessential socialist state. Sound familiar?

He also tells me that most of the city bus lines (mass-transit systems) in the larger cities in Sweden are now owned by private companies. 

Hmmmmm....


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

BTW...I'm guessing that macdoc would claim that Sweden is just moving towards the _political center_ .

I wonder if they'll stop when they hit the "center'. Or will they move on into more conservative and pragmatic policies? You know...like pretty much everyone else is doing?

BTW...macspectrum will say that the Swedes are "slightly confused" right now...and will post several links to leftist websites who will totally refute any of this real data...he may even quote that great sage of the 21st century, Michael Moore...and use his "figures" to disprove these facts.

And macello will revert to his usual schoolyard antics and tell me that my take on all of this is "boilerplate" and that it "$mells bad". He will mention "$tink bombs" and may even call me a "big $tinkyhead". He will end his reply with some sort of slogan from one of the Big Unions about how they are, in fact, totally responsible for all that we hold near and dear. And implying that we will all be in dire straights when they are finally gone.

Ho hum.....


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt taken on the role of "clairvoyant" now?
1-900-ASKNUTT

For $49.95 U.S., of course, macnutt will tell you about the demise of the socio-democratic system and how good ol' fascism is coming.

It will be on a recorded loop by the way.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Nope, macspectrum..just trying to inform you of some world events that you may have missed.  

BTW...I have a phone number for _you_ Michael!

Dial 1-800-WAAAAA

(They will give you some sympathy. Honest)


----------



## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

Slogan for macnutt:

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)

Whites Only Heros Please!  

What about Private Lori? 
(Not anecdotal)

For the last week America has been gripped by the 'Saving Private Jessica' mission. But nobody wanted to hear the sadder story of her friend and tentmate Private Lori Piestewa, who died in combat. Gary Younge reports from her home town of Tuba City, Arizona 

Gary Younge 
Thursday April 10, 2003 
The Guardian 

This is the tale of two privates. They were sisters-in-arms - two young women fighting for Uncle Sam. They were roommates at Fort Bliss military base in Texas; tentmates in the Gulf, and close friends at all places in between. Then they (and 13 other members of the US Army's 507th Maintenance Company) took a wrong turn in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya and were ambushed. One, Jessica Lynch, 19, was injured, hospitalised and then rescued by Special Forces to emerge as the poster girl for American resilience and camaraderie. The other, Lori Piestewa, 23, was killed, with the gruesome distinction of being the first native American in the US army to be killed in combat and the only American servicewoman to die in this war. 

On the face of it, Piestewa, from the Hopi tribe, does not fit the bill for the all-American war hero or heroine. She was a single mother of two who left her four-year-old son, Brandon, and three-year-old daughter, Carla, with her parents who live in a trailer in Tuba City, Arizona while she went to fight in the Middle East. But, in more ways than one, hers is the other American face of this war, fought by a military whose ranks have been swelled by poor, non-white women. A volunteer army comprising recruits who, whatever their patriotic credentials, have few other choices. 


This community of 8,200, which according to the census is almost 95% native American will offer anything beyond, "She was a great girl", "We are very proud" and "It's so sad", for fear of appearing to be exploiting her death. 

During the first Gulf war a group of native Americans in Oregon wrote an open letter to President George Bush Sr, ridiculing his pretext for attacking Iraq. "Dear President Bush," it read. "Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources ... As in your own words, 'The occupation and overthrow of one small nation is one too many.' Yours sincerely, An American Indian." 

"A survey of the American military's endlessly compiled and analysed demographics paints a picture of a fighting force that is anything but a cross-section of America, with minorities overrepresented and the wealthy and the underclass essentially absent," wrote the New York Times recently. 

Lynch will come home to West Virginia on crutches, to the waving of American flags; Piestewa will return to the reservation in a coffin draped in an American flag. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I'm not sure she is being "ignored" at all.....

Didn't they just re-name a whole highway after her? That should keep her name alive for rather a long time, I'd think.

And I don't recall any of the others killed so far in this war being similarly honored. 

There has been more about Jessie Lynch because it's a story that has a daring rescue in the middle of the night from enemy hands by a bunch of marines. There are also some rumors floating around that this tiny 19 year old girl, who was not exactly a regular foot soldier, grabbed a weapon and fought like a tiger until she ran out of ammo. Not sure if it's true, but I am a bit curious as to how come she ended up with so many broken bones, when all the rest either died in the firefight, or emerged pretty much OK.

This is movie material. It's no wonder everyone wants to hear every little detail.

But then I'm not consumed by hate for the US and I spend very little of my time trying to find something negative about everything they do.

Perhaps it's just you're point of view, macello.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

The story of Jessica Lynch is under constant revision. The press have not been allowed to interview her in order to respect her privacy (or to allow time to negotiate the best exclusive?). When rescued she was said to have suffered multiple injuries including bruising, broken bones and multiple gunshot wounds. She was also said to have fought bravely and to have shot several Iraqis. It is now said that she has several broken bones and contusions but the bullet holes have disappeared. She obviously went through hell and must have felt she was about to die on numerous occasions. I hope she does personally benefit from her terrible experiences (as she was only in the Army as a means to an education) but I also hope that the hype is cut away so we can hear the real story and not some glorification. Is not the fact that she is alive and recovering enough of a story?

It's great to hear that the US has captured Abu Abbas thus confirming a link between international terrorism and Iraq. Duh. Abbas has freely travelled in the Middle East and was in Egypt (at the invitation of the government) in January. His presence in Iraq was also not a surprise. 

"Several expatriate terrorist groups continued to maintain offices in Baghdad, including the Arab Liberation Front, the inactive 15 May Organization, the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and the Abu Nidal organization (ANO). PLF leader Abu `Abbas appeared on state-controlled television in the fall to praise Iraq's leadership in rallying Arab opposition to Israeli violence against Palestinians."


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## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

macnutt,

"Didn't they just re-name a whole highway after her?"

Still can't be bothered checking facts ...eh ?

Keeping her name alive won't help her kids.  

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)

Arizona Governor Napolitano said she will petition the Legislature to rename a mountain known as Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak, and also to rename the Squaw Peak Freeway after Piestewa. Both are in Phoenix. 

Napolitano's proposal to rename the mountain has caused controversy because state and federal policies on geographic titles say there must be a five-year waiting period after a person's death before that person's name can be used. 

Tim J. Norton, chairman of the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names, has said the board should not abandon the guidelines for Piestewa because renaming geographic features should not be an emotional issue. 

"Wholesale name changes are an atrocity," Norton told the Arizona Republic in an article published on Thursday. Even after the waiting period, he added, "I'm not sure that renaming something in Phoenix in honor of a woman who lived hundreds of miles away will meet our criteria." 

http://www.governor.state.az.us/


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## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

"this tiny 19 year old girl, who was not exactly a regular foot soldier, grabbed a weapon and fought like a tiger until she ran out of ammo"








Excellent faux dramatics, macnutt. Start the script.

Doesn't that make you feel a teensy weensy bit AWOL?

WAR IS FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON"T DIE! *
*AWOL (armchair warriors on line)


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

You must be taking lessons from macspectrum. Quoting a small portion of someone's sentence and then making fun of it in order to try and discredit their position. You guys must have both been in the same indoctrination gulag together, I see a similar methodology.

Or perhaps you've both been watching too much Michael Moore...and have picked up on his habit of omitting details and twisting facts to make a point that couldn't be made by normal means.

Stay with it! It's very entertaining.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Nothing every really changes, does it?

The U.S. will force-feed its people more flag-wrapped heroic stories of its brave boys and girls, superficial and dumbed-down so that the folk down there in Georgia or Arizona or whereever won't find the inclination to ask the bigger questions, like why it's the poor who are sent overseas to die, while the rich make money of the destruction either way.

Lori Piestawa will be forgotten, how sadly typical for an American Indian, while Jessie Lynch, poor thing, will become a rich thing (hopefully, she deserves something for her suffering) in TV movies, or, should the actress-of-the-month desire a role that doesn't involve jiggling one's boobs for money, perhaps the big screen.

The sad, cruel, demoralizing stories will come -- ten years or more from now -- distorted still, changed in ways that make them palatable even in their ugliness. 

Meanwhile, one poor, damned-near-dead Iraqi kid becomes an international cause celebe. "Ali" is carted off to Kuwait city for a photo op, with surgery and burn unit treatment a thankful bonus. The Emir or whoever he is, dark shades worn indoors and robes flowing like the oil he commands, breezes in, places hand on the child's cheek with only a glance, avoiding the boys fearful eyes, and addresses the adoring cameras surrounding him. 

Ali, strapped to a hospital bed with no arms to wave off the crush of reporters and "important people," endures the trial in a stoic (or is it shell-shocked?) silence. Eyes wandering, he seems to be looking for his mo-- oh, that's right, she was killed by the same American bombs that took her and Ali's father. Perhaps its an uncle, or a cousin, standing pressed against a wall by the crowd anxious for just the right image, the tragic - But Free! - image of an Iraqi boy who no longer has to worry about the Evil Saddam. Yes, no doubt this child is content that the price he paid to rid his homeland of the terrible leader was worth it. 

But surely all the suffering and hardships are nearly over, and the Iraqi people will rise, stand on their own feet, and bring newfound democracy and hope to oppressed peoples of the region. Well.. once the Americans leave, that is. Maybe in a year or two. Gee, hope there's a bit of oil left by then.... 

PS: Robert Fisk is worth reading today.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Robert Fisk is so severly discredited these days as to be below notice by most thinking individuals. All the far-left naysayers are scrambling ferociously to find something negative to blot out the image of smiling Iraqis waving and cheering....and to still the many voices who are asking " _how come you guys were so terribly WRONG...yet again?_ 

Yes...little Ali is a sad sight. Those horrible Americans probably bombed his house on purpose. They just wanted to kill and maim as many innocent Iraqis as possible because then they could steal all of the oil, right?

Too bad Ali didn't grow up healthy and whole under the ironclad rule of Saddam or his vermin offspring. Then he could have been murdered in some sort of terrible way...along with thousands of his countrymen...by the psychopath himself. Kind of an honour, really.

And it's too bad that Saddam chose to put so many of his weapons and soldiers right next to residential areas. He did this specifically in order to create just this sort of controversy among us when the inevitable near-miss caused something terrible to happen to innocents...and he hoped that it would make us stop before we had gotten very far.

Fuel for the fire, for the Anti-War/Pro-Saddam "peace marchers".

Too bad you bought into it Mark.

Try looking at the bigger picture...and imagine all of the thousands of Iraqis who _won't_ be dying horrible deaths at the bloodstained hands of Saddam in the coming years.

Ask yourself "is this a bad thing? Or am I just LOOKING for bad things in order to cover my previous position on this, now that the real truth is becoming obvious?"

Just like Robert Fisk.

Bad data is bad data...and you can't cover it with spin.

If you do, then you're just fooling yourself.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

It may be convenient to dismiss Fisk, but he's by no means alone in reporting the events of the aftermath of the "liberation" and he is actually in Iraq. How come the closest big-wig to be captured is Saddams brother-in-law? Oh, and not forgetting Abu Abbas who told a CNN reporter in January he wasn't going to leave Baghdad if it was invaded. He's the "missing link" apparently.....

The US troops are presumably expending their energy on seeking out the vaunted WOMD and thinking up new sound bites.

And there has still been no mention of the aftermath of the bunker buster attack on the "grand villa" that was unfortunately 100 metres from the actual target causing the deaths of a family of 14. A mistake, equipment failure or carelessness?

Dubya's response to the aftermath of victory is to notice the US economy is further south than El Paso. A new round of tax cuts! Paid for by Iraqi oil or Iraqi blood?


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I would have expected more from one of ehmac's more intelligent citizens, Jwoodget.

"bush's tax cuts paid for by Iraqi oil or Iraqi blood"

I mean _really_.  

The "Iraqi blood' that was spilt in the short three-week "war" was pretty minimal. You need to leave out soldiers, who are expected to spill blood and die...although masses of them actually ran away or surrendered..and you need to look at how many innocent civilians were actually killed in the 21-day conflict.

Not too many really. Probably less than Saddam would have killed during the same period. Certainly there will be far less Iraqis killed and tortured by their own government in the coming months.

Care to dispute this? Care to add this into the equation? I'm listening. Really.

And I have no idea what you meant by saying that the Iraqis that died in this conflict have "paid for George Bush's tax cut with their own blood". How does this equate? Care to explain this bit of twisted logic? I'm listening. Really.

Forgive me for saying that it sounds like some sort of quote from a far-left media organ. You know...the ones who have been so _terribly wrong_ about pretty much everything...and are desperately trying to find negatives in order to blot out this simple reality. And retain some shred of credibility with their rapidly-shrinking readership?

As for Iraqi oil.....George Bush has repeatedly said, from DAY ONE, that the Iraqi oil _belongs to the Iraqi people_ . He is still saying that.

(and a lot of people will be publicly holding him to that statement...including me)

It will be sold on the open market, at whatever the going price is at that time, in order to pay for the rebuilding and advancement of their own country. It may well be bought by US oil companies (at regular world prices)...but I can assure you that it will NOT be available to the French or Russian or German companies who had contracts to buy oil from Saddam.

That, my friend, is a no-brainer.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I would have expected more from one of ehmac's more intelligent citizens, Jwoodget.

"bush's tax cuts paid for by Iraqi oil or Iraqi blood"

I mean _really_.  

The "Iraqi blood' that was spilt in the short three-week "war" was pretty minimal. You need to leave out soldiers, who are expected to spill blood and die...although masses of them actually ran away or surrendered..and you need to look at how many innocent civilians were actually killed in the 21-day conflict.

Not too many really. Probably less than Saddam would have killed during the same period. Certainly there will be far less Iraqis killed and tortured by their own government in the coming months.

Care to dispute this? Care to add this into the equation? I'm listening. Really.

And I have no idea what you meant by saying that the Iraqis that died in this conflict have "paid for George Bush's tax cut with their own blood". How does this equate? Care to explain this bit of twisted logic? I'm listening. Really.

Forgive me for saying that it sounds like some sort of quote from a far-left media organ. You know...the ones who have been so _terribly wrong_ about pretty much everything...and are desperately trying to find negatives in order to blot out this simple reality. And retain some shred of credibility with their rapidly-shrinking readership?

As for Iraqi oil.....George Bush has repeatedly said, from DAY ONE, that the Iraqi oil _belongs to the Iraqi people_ . He is still saying that.

(and a lot of people will be publicly holding him to that statement...including me)

It will be sold on the open market, at whatever the going price is at that time, in order to pay for the rebuilding and advancement of their own country. It may well be bought by US oil companies (at regular world prices)...but I can assure you that it will NOT be available to the French or Russian or German companies who had contracts to buy oil from Saddam.

That, my friend, is a no-brainer.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Sorry about the double post. My crappy dial-up is disconnecting me about every seven or eight minutes tonight. Very frustrating.

Further to the above posts....


I'm not entirely sure that the attack on the residence that Saddam was reportedly attending on April 8th was not sucessful. Certainly the leftist media has seized upon this and called it a blunder and a miss, but....

How come the whole city of Baghdad seemed to turn out the very next day in celebration? How come they suddenly all seemed to know that Saddam and the top Baathists were gone for good, after that particular point in time?

Why were they in the streets hauling down his statues and looting his ministries on the very next day? And waving American flags in the air?

Right after that particular residence was destroyed?

Poses an interesting question, does it not?


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

So was it a "bad thing" macspectrum?

Do you think that the removal of a psychopath who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people...and who tortured and killed more Arabs than any other man in history..was a wrong move?

Did you look away when you saw the masses of Iraqis cheering in the streets and tearing down Saddam's statues? Did it bother you to see them waving American flags and high-fiving the US soldiers? Over and over again?

And do you realise that a single dose of anthrax....the size of a packet of sugar for your coffee...could kill one hundred thousand people. A suitcase full could eliminate a whole country .

Imagine trying to find something the size of a suitcase in a country the size of France. Then imagine how hard it would be to find that suitcase in a country where the despotic leader had had twelve years of experience hiding it from UN inspectors.

Then factor into that mix the fact that thousands of chemical protection suits have been found wherever the Iraqi militarywere hiding out. Plus thousands of vials of atrophine.

THEN factor into that equation the fact that hundreds of artillery shells have been found with NO explosives inside them. But lots of room for something else. 

Why would you have chemical protection suits and atrophine...if you weren't expecting to use chemical weapons? Especially when you know your enemy (the US) won't be using chemical weapons?

And what the heck would be the good of having EMPTY artillery shells? They would...at best...make a dull thud as they landed, intact, among the invading troops. Big deal.

Unless they were filled with some lethal substance that would kill thousands on contact.

Gee...do ya figure?

Wake up. Use your brain. Stop looking for negatives in a very positive situation.

Reality is right in front of you. Move into the light.

I'll be the very first person to welcome you into the real world, with open arms.

Honest.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

macnutt,
the big responsibility of being the "good guys" is you have to play by the rules.

if not, then you lower yourself to the bad guys.

police have guns. they are held to a different standard than I (who doesn't own a gun nor is authorized to use one) the cops need to be held to a higher standard. that is part of the reponsibility that they take on by being givent the power to kill

similar analogy applies for the U.S.

they said they were going into Iraq as per UN resolution 1441 (which having read it many times I don't believe it gives them the mandate to do so) but having done so, they now must live by that decision

rhetoric about regime change and other spin doctoring just doesn't cut it, if you portray yourself as one of the good guys

that is what separates "them" from "us" i.e. evil vs. good. if the u.s. doesn't maintain the good guy image then the line between them and the axis of evil grows thinner by the day.

please read Tim Robbins speech to the National Press Club

It's the age old question; "do the ends justify the means"?

i vote no

it's plain and simple. at least in my eyes.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

Resoulution 1441 said...in effect "disarm or ELSE"

The "OR ELSE" was vetoed by France...who said tat they would veto ANY resolution that authorised ANY actual action against Saddam. Under ANY conditions.

Period, full stop.

That pretty much dumps the "OR ELSE" part of the UN sanction and makes it just as powerless as the previous 17 sanctions they had sworn out against him.

And once we take into account all of the oil contracts and illegal materials that France was selling Saddam, in exchange for his favor in selling them oil...which were in total violation of ALL UN sanctions...

Then we begin to have a slight inkling as to why the UN has become such a powerless and inneffective body. 

SOMEBODY had to do SOMETHING. George W. did that thing...and we are all far better off because of it. Especially the Iraqis.

Well...the French aren't doing so well now. They've lost a big customer for their high-tech gear, and they aren't likely to be allowed to buy Iraqi oil anymore. Jaques Chirac has lost a golfing buddy too. The French economy, which was already staggering under the weight of massive social programs that they couldn't afford and saddled with huge public unions who think that a four day work week is far to much, may just collapse in the next few years. Especially without Saddam's oil money.

And very especially now that the Americans are avoiding their products in droves. So sad.

I weep for them. For ten seconds or so.

But now it's over. And I'm happy again!


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

BTW...I suspect that a major re-organisation of the UN is in the offing.

Want to bet that France loses their right to veto, because of their illegal sale of arms and materiel to Saddam? This is about the 53rd time they've violated UN rules...we won't even mention the fact that they kept on blowing up pacific islands with nuclear weapons long after everyone else had agreed not to. Or about a million other despicable things that should have had them tossed out of any civilised company of Nations long ago.

Think I'm wrong?

Watch and see.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

riddle me this macnutt,
if the UN is so "powerless" then why would the US bother to invoke the name of 1441 everytime they could when building up their forces for attacking Iraq?

I would almost have more respect for Bush et al if they just said, "hell, we just don't like what is going on and we're going to invade regardless of what the UN says or thinks"

but no, 1441 over and over and over again....

you can't have it both ways

We see the emperor's new clothes. the emperor hasn't even a clue why he is feeling a draft.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

George W. Bush was working very hard to follow all of the rules. The rules of 1441 said that "if you don't disarm, there will be consequences"

He DIDN't disarm! (even without any WOMD, we have already found lots of missiles, etc that are in total violation of 1441)

The trouble is, the French weren't about to allow any sort of enforcement of ANY UN resolution. Period.

1441 threatened "serious consequences" but those same consequences were blocked by Jaques Chirac...who has welcomed Saddam into his house on several occaisions, and who has extensive commercial contracts that trade oil for high-tech gear with the butcher of Baghdad. 

Does this sound like a real situation...or some sort of ridiculous game that was being played out on a grand scale? One that might have eventually spelled doom for many of us...and that certainly would have continued the killing and torture that was going on in Iraq?

And do you think that EVERYONE is better off now...or were we better off four weeks ago?

Please explain.


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

what about all those pix of rummy and saddam being all buddy buddy.

or did ollie shred them?


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## MACSPECTRUM (Oct 31, 2002)

I find that the question of the U.S. invading Iraq using UN resolution 1441 as cover more interesting, especially in the light of the lack of WMDs being "discovered" yet.

Also interesting is that the same mantra is now being repeated for Syria;
WMD
terrorism
regime change


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

No worries about the double posting macnutt. It still doesn't make sense the second time.

Please get your facts checked (if, that is, they are facts rather than opinions). Antrax lethal factor is a nasty bug but is also an impractical weapon as demonstrate din the North Eastern US in the Fall of 2001. There was more anthrax distributed in that incident to kill (by your factoid reckoning) 2.5 million people.

I too am looking forward to the overall influence of the US on Iraqi oil sales. Ironically, the UN security council has, to date, resisted the pleas of the US to lift sanctions against Iraq (apart from humanitarian aid). The reasons include the Russians wanting to protect their oil export revenue but it also puts US "rebuilding" contracts on hold as well as oil sales for anything except humanitarian aid.


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## MacNutt (Jan 16, 2002)

I find it interesting, as well, that the former sellers of high-tech-gear-for-oil, are now resisting the lifting of sanctions against Iraq! Despite the fact that it is no longer being run by Saddam!

Or...maybe...they are hoping that he pops up and takes the whole thing over again? That would be very good for THEM...because they have extensive contracts with the psychopath.

The alternative is very scary...these countries will be shown to be in violation of numerous UN resolutions...and they will also be out a vast amount of income as well.

Scary stuff! For THEM.

I can see a big reorganisation of the UN in the offing. one that puts real teeth in their resolutions and one that removes the veto power from countries who have regularly violated the UN resolutions.

France, Germany and Russia will be held in no higher regard than Somalia, Ethiopia, Iran or Yemen.

Then, perhaps, there will be a concerted movement to move the UN toward a body that distinguishes between democracies and dictatorships. One man's opinion...or the vote of a whole COUNTRY.

Which do YOU think is more real?

This is a time of great change. Watch and see.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

macnutt wrote: "I can see a big reorganisation of the UN in the offing. one that puts real teeth in their resolutions and one that removes the veto power from countries who have regularly violated the UN resolutions. France, Germany and Russia will be held in no higher regard than Somalia, Ethiopia, Iran or Yemen."

Well that would remove veto from the good 'ol USA too. Ain't gonna happen.


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## arminarm (Jan 12, 2002)

Sorry, Macnutt's







plans for the world and the UN would have looked better before the movie "FARGO" was released where we all saw how Jerry Lundegaard's best laid plans self-destruct of their own selfish interest.








(Macnutt, like Lundegaard seems SO sure of the plan)


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