I thought F/911 was a very powerful and moving film, flawed only by numerous nutty consipiracy theories. Whether you agree with it or not, Michael Moore is a great film maker.

I'm also going to jump into the middle of the "is war justified?" debate; concerning America's entry into the Second World War, it was actually unnessicary and not exactly unavoidable.

First of all, somehow the myth that the United States saved the world from Nazi dominion prevails when it was the Soviet Union that suffered the most casualties and broke the back of the Germany army. Had America never entered WWII, the Soviet Union would have simply stretched from Paris to Moscow instead of from Berlin to Moscow.

Secondly, many of FDR's foreign policy decisions were provocative or outright aggressive towards the Axis Powers. From '39 to '41, when America was claiming neutrality, FDR had authorized America ships convoying war supplies to Britain to fire upon the German navy. Despite this, Hitler exercised enormous restraint in trying to avoid outright war with the United States. The oil embargo imposed against Japan compelled them to invade the oil rich Dutch East Indies and seek to destroy the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. There are numerous other reasons, but I'm just giving you an idea.

And the war had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Rumors of what was occuring had surfaced, but nobody really believed them. Afterall, the Allies had claimed in WWI that the Germans were mutilating Belgian babies and recycling the corpses of Allied soldiers into glue, amoung other lies.

Is war ever justified? I think so, though I'm hard pressed to think of a justified American war in the last 200 years... off the top of my head, I'd say just the Revolution.

The question the article poses that lore linked said that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by anything non-nature related was about 1.1% or something. Or in otherwords, the CO2 that everyone fears is not being increased dramatically by humans.

This, however, does not mean global warming is bullshit. The fact that there is global warming is indisputable. What causes it is up to debate.

What I have not been able to find is an article or study that is able to give a contraditory ratio of human-produced CO2 to the naturally-produced CO2.

Also, the article stated that all other emissions arnt prodeced in a high enough number to be harmful. I havent really looked into it but my curiousity lays in the CO2, not the other stuff since CO2 is the most commonly debated topic.

I sometimes create emissions. But only at night.

The real problem with Kyoto is that it gave exemptions to 'developing countries' which included (I believe) china. Which in effect meant that large but poor countries got a free pass to pollute as much as they want - nullifying the real point of the treay in the first place - while placing an enormous economic burden on countries like the US to comply, when other countries arent.

Its easy to say 'oh, but like a hundred countries ratified this treaty, and WE back out of it' - its easy to ratify a treaty that doesnt require YOU to do anything.

As I said - I'm not voting for bush this time - but he did the right thing in regards to Kyoto.

There's so much environmental bullshit, anyway. Environmentalists are really their own worst enemy, because they just 'feel' this stuff and don't do their homework. Primarily their opposition to nuclear.

Replace coal with nuclear power on a much larger scale and you've largely solved your global warming situation. A byproduct of nuclear power generation is hydrogen, and what do you know, one of the problems with adoption of hydrogen cars is that pure hydrogen is a bit difficult to manufacture despite making up 74% of the universe. Now you have an additional source of hydrogen to ease transitions from cars reliant on fossil fuels.

All this aside from the point that we really, really don't understand the global climate enough to really say that we whats going on in a long-term perspective. Which isn't to say thats not a good reason to use some caution. But caution does not equate to trillions of dollars of economic impact due to environmental policy on something that we really aren't all that sure about.

Environmentalists like to blame freaking everything on logging. They say we've destroyed all our forests. Actually - in America, we have more trees than we did in 1920. And its painfully obvious to me every time I freaking go outside, drive on the freeway, or ride in an airplane that that's the case. The places where deforestation is a big problem is not where loggers are - its in very poor countries where people need farmland to freaking survive. Actually, its pretty obvious in my apartment that we aren't destroying nature nearly fast enough. The trees are like weeds and the bugs are everywhere. This planet is in fact, still quite crawling with life. But you wouldn't know it to hear these guys talk.

But oh well. Sidetracked.

Everybody remember Metal Gear Solid? Nuclear stuff is bad!

Countries that don't offer 100Mbit/s lines to their inhabitants are barbaric and underdeveloped. This is the problem with the world today. Slow connections breed terrorism.

Quote:Originally posted by zaril

Countries that don't offer 100Mbit/s lines to their inhabitants are barbaric and underdeveloped. This is the problem with the world today. Slow connections breed terrorism.
I blame video games for the rise of terrorism. Or better, the lack of them in the problematic countries.
They NEED to play more Far Cry!

Quote:Originally posted by Khross

First of all, somehow the myth that the United States saved the world from Nazi dominion prevails when it was the Soviet Union that suffered the most casualties and broke the back of the Germany army. Had America never entered WWII, the Soviet Union would have simply stretched from Paris to Moscow instead of from Berlin to Moscow.
I'm going to have to disagree with that... The Germans were militarily superior to the Russians in every respect except numbers. They seriously kicked the USSR about, despite simultaneously fighting the British in Europe and North Africa, and also subduing all of continental Europe. The thing that saved the Soviets from total defeat was the delay in Hitler's invasion of Russia and his army getting itself frozen to death in the terrible Russian winter. I suppose nobody can say what would have happened, but it looks to me like - had Hitler attacked the Russians at the right time - they wouldn't have remained in the war for long.

Changing track onto the nuclear issue: Nuclear power is the answer to everything, energy wise. Done properly (i.e. not the Soviets' "ignore it until it melts-down" attitude) there's next to no risk involved, and the amount of waste for the energy produced is negligible. And even nuclear weapons are a good thing (again, if looked after properly) in that they have discouraged conflict between major nations since the end of WW2. If there had been no mutally-assured distruction, who knows what the cold war would have turned into...
Though I do think the ridiculous numbers of nukes still stockpiled by the US and Russia is not a good thing. Especially in Russia's case, because they don't look after them properly (after the break up of the USSR, nukes went missing from various Soviet Bloc countries and are still unaccounted for. Only a matter of time before one ends up in the hands of Al-Queda or other terrorists). And what's the point in owning 7000 nukes when only a tiny fraction of those would be enough to wipe out all life on earth?

...

Meh, WW2 and nuclear power are more interesting than any Michael Moore movie. :P

Oooohhhh, it's probably about 25.6% by now... ;)

Yes, nuclear power for the world would be bad, but that's why I said that bit about the Russians. And there may be a fine line between disaster and business as usual, but the Russians were really asking for it, and they've been lucky not to have a lot more nuclear badness on their hands... maybe instead of spending so much on their space programme they should divert more funds towards properly decomissioning their unused fleets of rusting nuclear subs. The worst thing about nuclear power is that common sense isn't a requirement for ownership.

Which leads to my suggestion, had I been dictator I'd enforce it, that a test should be performed for each couple who wants to reproduce. In order to be granted reproduction rights, they need to pass an intelligence test, common sense test and other fascist tests. This way we can only win!

1. The world gets smarter by the day, by releasing less waste (dumb people) into the world.

2. People start failing the tests and we'll soon stop reproducing and humanity ceases to exist.

I like both possibilities to be honest.