Canadian Scientists Protest Political Sandbagging of Evidence-Based Policy 216
New submitter sandbagger writes "Stephen Harper and the Canadian government have made headlines several times for stifling opinions that dissent with their own. This also applies to respected, peer-reviewed science. Canadian scientists have chafed at being gagged and having evidence take a back seat when forming policy, so they're grabbing their slide rules and marching in protest. 'Hundreds of participants gathered in 17 cities for rallies on Monday. In Toronto some donned lab coats while in Vancouver protesters were seen wearing gags adorned with the Conservative Party logo – a reference to the alleged muzzling of federal scientists by political overseers. ... Dr. Gibbs and colleagues said they hoped the rallies would alert the public to scientists’ concerns that the federal government has shifted funding markedly toward commercially driven research at the expense of public-interest science. ... Dr. Gibbs said her group would consult with the Canadian research community and look to other countries in trying to craft recommended policies for science in government. In recent years explicit scientific integrity rules have been adopted by many U.S. federal departments and agencies, after accusations of censorship and politicization of science during the administration of former president George W. Bush. 'Canadian scientists are where American scientists were maybe a decade ago,' said Michael Halpern, a Washington, D.C.-based program manager with the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'They're trying to figure out how to protect themselves from a government that’s increasingly focused on message control over a more open discussion of the facts.'"
Gov't? (Score:5, Funny)
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They do, but the RCMP must have time to coordinate with NSA
the Related Links on this story are (Score:2)
> Canadian Government Muzzling Scientists
> Canadian scientists protest Tory's sandbagging of evidence-based policy
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Harper seems to have erased your links. The bastard.
First sentance should read : (Score:2)
He demanded it, and it should be used in all articles, not just positive ones.
Sounds inefficient (Score:2)
"laser"? (Score:5, Funny)
This is Canada, they use a chicken cannon.
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OMFG.. Chickens! With fricken LASER CANNONS!
(Yes, I've seen chicken cannons and chicken catapults, they're humorous, too)
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OMFG.. Chickens! With fricken LASER CANNONS!
(Yes, I've seen chicken cannons and chicken catapults, they're humorous, too)
Nothing beats an air drop of frozen turkeys.
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"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" -- Mr. Carlson
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Boot to the head
So.... (Score:4, Interesting)
what is this muzzled science? Why isn't that obvious let alone seemingly never mentioned.
getting the word out in this day and age isn't exactly the problem it was 20 years ago.
god knows I'm not sticking up for that cretin harper, but seriously, what's the deal?
Re:So.... (Score:5, Informative)
So, imagine you have a lot of government scientists who do research in various fields.
Now imagine that the government has told them they can't attend conferences and discuss their research without a government minder being present to be sure what the scientists say is 'on message'.
And now imagine that being 'on message' is ideologically driven, and often divorced from evidence and facts -- but purely based on the beliefs of the government.
Basically they've told the scientists to STFU, and stop telling people things which contradict with what they're saying or risk being censured.
It has never been different... (Score:3)
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when you put it in a fruit salad, call me.
if this example from 1983 is the best you can do.... it's weak.
kudos for being the only non-anon reply (at least so far) though. wtf is up with that?
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This sounds rather nebulous. That is, it's possible to interpret what you've said as either a bug or a feature.
Given the recent IPCC leak, if this is about the failed co2 hypothesis and nothing more, then they deserve it.
If they're pointing out pollution is bad and getting way worse, then they're in the right. But if this is the case, this is actionable.
The fact they're keeping quiet in all their PR about what these issues are tells me they're hiding something. And this is not the first time they've made no
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The deal is simple.
In the medieval ages, the Church seized power. Religion was the major power holder, and all world leaders were beholden to the Church. As such, the Church had a huge amount of control over all the world.
There has been a huge movement to either debase the public's acceptance of religion or to showcase political figures as religious crusaders, either of which moves the public's accepted authority to these political figures. It is commonly held in America that the left mocks people f
Gone (Score:4, Informative)
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Here in Australia the Minister for science role has been scraped, effectively removing scientific opinion from the decision making process.
Sorry, it is called... ummm... "budget consciousness" (already took the decision to scrap the carbon tax, why would they need to hear other opinions?)
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Re:Gone (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean science takes a back seat to industry profit, just like in the U.S.? You know, stuff like letting food and drug manufacturers "self regulate" or exempting fracking from environmental laws.
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Re:Gone (Score:4, Insightful)
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Quite true. The Minister for Industry is in charge of Science, and in particular the CSIRO. Which is how we end up with the minister in charge of CSIRO having no mention of educational attainments on his Wikipedia Page [wikipedia.org] (does he have any?), and is climate skeptic [wordpress.com].
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No, there is no "Minister for Science" but there wasn't under the previous mob either... "Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research." The new mob have the wholly expected stance on science; science that does not turn a short-term profit for "Industry" is not science worth having. So, science for educational purposes, pure science research, environmental science, any climate change related science, etc. don't get special (any) attention.
In Canada, nobody can hear ACs post (Score:2)
Mostly because they use the NSA spy program to identify the ACs and send the mounties to snowboard them.
(caveat - they don't waterboard except in summer)
2015 can't come soon enough (Score:2)
Harper has proven himself an ignorant, unworthy, corporate-serving and ego-driven jackass. Too bad he can't be thrown out of the PMO via non-confidence in the same way his party rose to power.
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Sadly the non-Harper vote will probably be even more split and Harper will get another majority with 30% of the vote next time. He'll call that an overwhelming mandate and continue on.
Grabbed their Slide Rules? (Score:2)
I would hope that the state of Canadian Science isn't still relying on Slide Rules. I learned with a slide rule but a good old calculator or crap, a cell phone these days with the right app kicks butt over a Slide Rule.
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Keep in mind ... (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing to keep in mind is that government scientists are pretty much in the same position as scientists who work in industry: they are there to serve the interests of their employer.
In the case of government scientists, their role is to conduct research that relates to policy or to support the civil service. For example: environmental scientists may be conducting research into acceptable harvest levels for fisheries or how to manage land in a flood plain. It is unfortunate when a government distorts that research to support their policies rather than using the research to inform policy, but that shouldn't be unexpected.
More concerning is the cutbacks to academic research, which has been more independent in the past. Academic scientists have not, traditionally, been tied to the interests of government so they have had much more leeway to express their results independent of external pressure.
Re:Keep in mind ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their research is there to support the Canadian people that pay their salaries. It should be used for the people, not against them.
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No. The thing to keep in mind is that this is a tautology to pretend that grant-funded research and out-come funded research are equal.
Re:Keep in mind ... (Score:4, Informative)
The scientists being muzzled are employees of various departments of the federal government. While several departments of the federal government give grants for scientific research, the scientists who receive those grants may be employed by other bodies. One example are universities. Universities are heavily funded by the government, but they are managed independently of the government. In that case, the scientists are not in the employment of the government so they are not under the same degree of control. (Of course the government can refuse to provide further grants to that scientist, but that is the limit of their control.)
At any rate, the whole point of my original post was that grant-funded research is not equivalent to outcome funded research.
I wish... (Score:2)
I wish critical thinking were taught in schools, with a special emphasis on finding logical fallacies in things politicians say.
I wish more people understood why we have so few choices in elections [wikipedia.org].
And I wish the Union of Concerned Scientists [ucsusa.org] had a political party arm so I could vote for them.
When are the US scientists going to rise up? (Score:2)
Obligatory Carl Sagan quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. What's happening is exactly what happened in Australia, the UK and the USA. That is the Murdoch empire has been blasting the populace with carefully orchestrated propaganda designed to shift the political spectrum "right" and get poor people to vote against their own interests.
It will never cease to amaze me how pathetically effective this type of targeted propaganda is at actively getting people to do things that are not in their own interest.
The Canadian shift has taken the longest to occur, part of that is because it took Murdoch longer to penetrate and take over enough of the Canadian media because Canada still has ownership rules (at least until the propaganda machine gets those revoked as an affront to capitalism like they did in the US). Inevitably the Canadian people will fall to the far right just like everyone else under the sway of the Murdoch propaganda machine.
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break the bad news to you, but people who vote to have their own rights taken away in the name of "security" probably didn't deserve to be making their own choices in the first place.
Incidentally, if you actually, sincerely believe that the current ball of shit that is world politics is entirely due to Rupert Murdoch, you're either mentally ill or trolling. The man is a speck, a drop in the ocean compared to some of the money moving in defense contract circles. Murdoch is just a rich fuck who's making himself richer parroting what the people with REAL power are saying, ingratiating himself to the royalty. Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in some little control room somewhere surrounded by intelligence agents plotting to take away your freedom, that's just paranoia talking. The politicians you elected are the ones doing that plotting. Even if he were, again, not important enough to make a difference. He's a media mogul, nothing more. I'm sure if the Democrats threw more money at him he'd dance just as well for the opposite side. The know nothings that Americans elect are the problem, not their media whores.
The one plotting to take away your freedom is your president, worry about that and forget Murdoch, you might actually accomplish something. Unless the extent of your activism involves schizophrenic rants about Rupert Murdoch being some sort of conservative Voodoo shaman?
Re: Sounds familiar... (Score:2, Insightful)
yes everyone let's ignore Murdoch and focus on the REAL threat, anyone who isn't a republican!
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Let's talk about the ACTUAL Threat, the Bipartisan "Keep Our Spoiled Butts in Power" party. The longer a pol is in office, the more bought-off he or she gets. . .
The answer, of course, is hard and enforced term limits, so that politicians can only get captured by the system only somewhat, before it kicks them out. . .
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in some little control room somewhere surrounded by intelligence agents plotting to take away your freedom, that's just paranoia talking.
It's true his power is not absolute.
Even in Australia (where his control of the print amounts to almost 77% of papers sold) he has, since he backed Whitlam in1972, lost the federal election on 3 occasions (1973, 1993 and 2010). He only missed 2010 by a hair's breath (his influence did not extend to those independents who decided which party to back in the hung parliament). That's a success rate of well below 100% (it's actually only a touch above 80%). And yes, in Australia, Murdoch backs either side of politics as the expediencies of current business imperatives demand. Though in the US (where his power is much diluted) his media seem welded on to the Republican side.
In Australia, of course, he has just notched up another win, in an election that (given the (re)emergence of a popular figure on the non-Murdoch just before the election) was being touted as almost a test of his power to determine the government of Australia. In the event Rudd ran a pretty lousy campaign so the precipitous fall in his popularity cannot entirely be attributed to Murdoch's admittedly shameless propaganda: among other things dressing the incumbent and his deputy in Nazi uniforms (actually Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schulz) on the front covers of Australia's highest circulation dailies.
OTOH, it would be foolish simply to ignore Murdoch's influence. And I would stress to that the use of 'Murdoch' here is somewhat of a synedoche, it being perhaps more accurate to speak of the influence of the upper management of News Ltd in general --including of course Col Allan, whom Murdoch sent in specifically to fight the 2013 federal election.
erratum (Score:2)
Oops, sorry that was 1974, not 1973
and
... on the non-Murdoch side ...
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break the bad news to you, but people who vote to have their own rights taken away in the name of "security" probably didn't deserve to be making their own choices in the first place.
Incidentally, if you actually, sincerely believe that the current ball of shit that is world politics is entirely due to Rupert Murdoch, you're either mentally ill or trolling. The man is a speck, a drop in the ocean compared to some of the money moving in defense contract circles. Murdoch is just a rich fuck who's making himself richer parroting what the people with REAL power are saying, ingratiating himself to the royalty. Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in some little control room somewhere surrounded by intelligence agents plotting to take away your freedom, that's just paranoia talking. The politicians you elected are the ones doing that plotting. Even if he were, again, not important enough to make a difference. He's a media mogul, nothing more. I'm sure if the Democrats threw more money at him he'd dance just as well for the opposite side. The know nothings that Americans elect are the problem, not their media whores.
The one plotting to take away your freedom is your president, worry about that and forget Murdoch, you might actually accomplish something. Unless the extent of your activism involves schizophrenic rants about Rupert Murdoch being some sort of conservative Voodoo shaman?
While I agree that the state of world politics is not due solely to Rupert Murdoch, I disagree that he is merely a speck. He controls quite a bit of media around the world. I hope we can all understand by now that when you can control what news and viewpoints people hear you can control what and how they think. Of course there are other news outlets, but in the US those are owned and controlled by a handful of corporations (five, I think). The operators of these corporations share certain interests and so will not allow much talk about certain subjects or viewpoints.
Murdoch is more than a speck; he is a master propagandist that has a heavy hand in how many people see the world. It's hard to overstate that kind of power. He serves a valuable purpose as a member of the Elite.
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it doesn't need to be blamed on Murdoch -- our government are the ones who don't want to hear facts and instead want to make decisions based on ideology.
They've basically cut funding for basic research, decided that anything which doesn't directly benefit industry is a waste of money, and told government scientists they're not allowed to say anything related to their researcher without a government rep being on hand to manage the spin and ensure the message is consistent with the crap the government tells us.
They don't want pesky facts getting in the way of what they want to say.
Rupert Murdoch has surprisingly little influence on our news from what I can tell.
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it doesn't need to be blamed on Murdoch -- our government are the ones who don't want to hear facts and instead want to make decisions based on ideology.
They've basically cut funding for basic research, decided that anything which doesn't directly benefit industry is a waste of money, and told government scientists they're not allowed to say anything related to their researcher without a government rep being on hand to manage the spin and ensure the message is consistent with the crap the government tells us.
They don't want pesky facts getting in the way of what they want to say.
Rupert Murdoch has surprisingly little influence on our news from what I can tell.
What I find fascinating about conservatives is that a large portion of them does not only chooses to be ignorant, they revel in being ignorant and declaring war on science. Conservative pundits can say what they want, pull out all the old slogans and call dissenting voices 'communists' and 'socialists' but even the old Soviet Union did not revel in ignorance. The communists did many things wrong but they at least they saw some value in scientific research and managed to turn Russia from a medieval kingdom into a modern technologically advanced country.
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Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really?
The right wing ones tell us that spending money to fix underlying social problems isn't as effective as prisons so we have huge expenditures on prisons and huge social problems. Yet in countries which spend money on fixing the social problems they have fewer people in prison.
Right wing politicians tell us that as long as a company is making profit it must be good, even if the banks are taking us to the cleaners.
Right wing politicians try to tell us what we can do with our bodies (eg abortion) because God told them so, and so therefore they must be right.
Right wing politicians have classified pot as a narcotic and make all sorts of claims about how dangerous and addictive it is without any evidence whatsoever other than their fervent belief in that.
Right wing governments will tell you abandoning safety and environmental regulations will actually make us safer and have a cleaner environment as if some magic will happen.
Right wing politicians tell us that tax cuts for the rich will somehow magically improve the rest of our lives when in fact there's no evidence for that.
Right wing governments will tell you all sorts of crap, specifically because it's in line with what they believe, but seldom because it's something they can prove.
Sorry, but you're an idiot if you believe that right wing politicians don't ignore evidence. The lies a right wing government tells you are just a different set of lies than what a left wing government tells you.
Which is why policy based on actual evidence is a much better choice.
Show me the proof, not what your ideology (left or right) has told you must be Immutable Truth.
If there's no evidence to support your claims, and the things you said were supposed to fix things aren't working -- then clearly what they've been claiming isn't based in facts or reality. Merely ideology and what they want the world to behave like.
Which is exactly what we see these days.
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Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since fucking WHEN is Obama and Clinton left wing?????
You woldnt know a left leaning politcian if it bit you on the ass
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Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Less eloquently worded: Calling Democrats left shows a serious lack of historical and international perspective.
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Exactly. Less eloquently worded: Calling Democrats left shows a serious lack of historical and international perspective.
Employing false dichotomies in political discourse is the mark of an immature species. You will not solve the Fermi Paradox in time if you do not put aside this lizard brained binary thinking.
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There are some left-leaning politicians out there in the US, but they're few and far between. For example, Senator Bernie Sanders has been an avowed socialist his entire career.
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I understand that in Europe they define those terms differently, since almost everyone there accepts the idea that the solution to problems is greater government power and the only question remaining is how that power is exercised.
Nope,
Right-wing = defense of entrenched priviledge.
Left-wing = liberty, equality, brotherhood. (and sisterhood too, of course).
Government is a means, not an end.
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The only wacko here are you. I am a very much left leaning social democrat. Obama and US Democratic party is centre-right. US Green party is centre-left. KPUSA is far left. Republicans are somewhere between the far right and the crazy right. You are probably beyond crazy right.
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Informative)
Obama and the left gave banks most of their goodies a few years ago.
The $700 billion bailout through TARP was authorized by Bush, not Obama. (While the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act [wikipedia.org] was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress, it was not a purely Democratic measure. In both houses, it received the support of the majority of congresscritters from both parties, and indeed needed support from both sides of the aisle to pass.)
Clinton deregulated the banks.
Well...
The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act [wikipedia.org] (GLB) repealing part of Glass-Steagall was passed while Clinton was president, certainly. Of course, the original bill was introduced in both House and Senate by Republicans - who controlled both houses at the time - and supported by a majority of mostly-Republicans in the House, and exclusively by Republicans in the Senate. The final bill produced by the conference committee was passed by veto-proof margins in both House and Senate; Clinton couldn't actually have stopped it.
Left unsaid in your comment is the implicit suggestion that the subprime mortgage crisis was precipitated by GLB, or that GLB made the crisis worse. While GLB has a number of flaws - and I would not say that it represented good public policy - it is debatable whether or not the subprime mortgage crisis can fairly be laid at its feet. There are credible arguments made that even prior to GLB's deregulation there was nothing in law that prevented investment banks from merging, from investing in the risky instruments that helped precipitate the crisis, or from keeping their books in the ways they did to conceal the problem until everything came crashing down. Some respectable individuals have even whispered that GLB may have slightly softened the impact, as banks that merged investment and depository institutions actually performed better during the crisis than investment-only firms.
Funny how you forget all of that.
Funny the...interesting...way you choose to remember all of that.
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Obama and the left gave banks most of their goodies a few years ago.
The $700 billion bailout through TARP was authorized by Bush, not Obama. (While the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act [wikipedia.org] was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress, it was not a purely Democratic measure. In both houses, it received the support of the majority of congresscritters from both parties, and indeed needed support from both sides of the aisle to pass.)
Clinton deregulated the banks.
Well...
The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act [wikipedia.org] (GLB) repealing part of Glass-Steagall was passed while Clinton was president, certainly. Of course, the original bill was introduced in both House and Senate by Republicans - who controlled both houses at the time - and supported by a majority of mostly-Republicans in the House, and exclusively by Republicans in the Senate. The final bill produced by the conference committee was passed by veto-proof margins in both House and Senate; Clinton couldn't actually have stopped it.
Left unsaid in your comment is the implicit suggestion that the subprime mortgage crisis was precipitated by GLB, or that GLB made the crisis worse. While GLB has a number of flaws - and I would not say that it represented good public policy - it is debatable whether or not the subprime mortgage crisis can fairly be laid at its feet. There are credible arguments made that even prior to GLB's deregulation there was nothing in law that prevented investment banks from merging, from investing in the risky instruments that helped precipitate the crisis, or from keeping their books in the ways they did to conceal the problem until everything came crashing down. Some respectable individuals have even whispered that GLB may have slightly softened the impact, as banks that merged investment and depository institutions actually performed better during the crisis than investment-only firms.
Funny how you forget all of that.
Funny the...interesting...way you choose to remember all of that.
Stop messing with his selective memory algorithms.
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Right wing politicians have classified pot as a narcotic and make all sorts of claims about how dangerous and addictive it is without any evidence whatsoever other than their fervent belief in that.
Damn that right-winger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt! [wikipedia.org]
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I agree with most of what you wrote, except this:
Right wing politicians try to tell us what we can do with our bodies (eg abortion) because God told them so, and so therefore they must be right.
Religion is a ruse. More offspring are of benefit to the farmers of mankind. Even if they be unwanted, abused, and maladjusted, they will employ (or be employed by) the privatized prison industry.
Re:The left... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a leftist. I'm upper middle class, and I believe that my taxes ought to be higher so as to help people who need it. I also believe your taxes should be higher in order to help people who need it. The world isn't so simple that we can just lump all poor people into one label (that is, "lazy") and say that they, as a group, deserve to starve and die. That is immoral. It is far more immoral than raising the income tax on the wealthy by a few percent.
I'm a leftist. I am aware of the fact that corporate profits are up while wages are down. I don't believe that people should live off of the government; I just wonder where all those jobs are now that the "job creators" are doing so well.
I'm a leftist. I am aware of the fact that the reason abortion was made legal in the first place was because people did it anyway, and many many people died from it. I also think it's funny as hell that you're this big conservative yet you expect young people to take care of your selfish ass in your old age. Save up some money like a good fucking responsible self-sufficient capitalist and pay those immigrants to take care of you, dipshit.
I'm a leftist. I'm no expert on climate change, but I know that people who study the climate for a living are more reliable sources on climate change than people who really really want climate change not to be true. That said, like every other leftist, I hope we are wrong about climate change, because if we're right about it, we're all fucked. Also, unlike with climate change, there's a lot of actual scientific debate on the merits of pot.
I'm a leftist. My car gets 45 miles to the gallon, and I'm in favor of pushing for stronger efficiency and emissions standards rather than stopping them. Every leftist in the world could shiver in the dark, but that wouldn't solve our emissions problem. Change needs to happen on a global scale, or we're fucked.
I'm a leftist, and I don't even know where the fuck to go with this one. We gave the rich their money? Are you fucking high? We want to tax it all back? Are you really, really fucking high? Fuck, I'd settle for having the investor class taxed at the same rate I am rather than at 15 percent.
I'm a leftist, and I understand that science starts out wrong about a lot of things, but when their observations don't fit their hypotheses, they refine their conclusions to fit the data rather than dogmatically repeating the same claims over and over again in the face of overwhelming evidence the way conservative economists do. You don't like science?
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No hypocrisy in saying they should be higher (or lower) provided that means higher (or lower) for everyone.
How old are you, nine?
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He said his and yours. In a democracy we all have to play by the same rules; that's basic fairness. Fairness is nothing to do with whether you agree with them or not. In a democracy, there will always be laws that somebody doesn't agree with, and everybody will find some of its laws disagreeable. Grow up and live with that, or fuck off to Somalia.
Sports analogy: A football coach may think field goals are overvalued, and that the game would be improved if they were only 2 points. He may actively campaig
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It's interesting. The people who bitch the most about affirmative action are the same people who feel very very strongly that discrimination by private companies should be legal. Here's a thought: make discrimination illegal, and then maybe we can talk about getting rid of affirmative action.
Discrimination kind of throws the whole "personal responsibility" thing right out the window, doesn't it? Hey, look at me! I was born white and wealthy, but I got where I am with hard work. If other people worked a
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So, since you believe that your taxes should be higher, I assume that you do not take any deductions when you file your income tax (or only those that bring your taxes down to what you think they should be)? If such is not the case, you are a hypocrite...
Um, no.
...and what you really believe is you are willing to pay more as long as I am paying more.
That's more like it. Paying more taxes as an individual accomplishes nothing. It's like a one-man boycott of a store; it doesn't work. If everyone in a certain bracket is paying more, then something can be accomplished. And, for the record, I have voluntarily paid a higher tax rate (you can do that in Massachusetts).
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Actual statistics [yahoo.com] contradict your bogus claims about abortion deaths.
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There's also a word for a person who only cares about him or herself: sociopath.
There are real slaves in the world who have to do what they're told 100% of the time and make no money. Paying a portion of your income in taxes doesn't make you a slave -- you are still free to choose what to do, and you are free to choose not to do anything at all. Your misuse of the word slavery is pathetic and laughable.
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Is it a lie that the invisible hand of the market lets some people slip through its fingers into poverty? That's the idea behind social services, such as for instance affordable education. It seems to be w
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Is it a lie that the invisible hand of the market lets some people slip through its fingers into poverty.
It is a lie to say that it is any worse than all the alternatives we have. No other system has improved the lives of the average people more than Capitalism and the free market. It isn't perfect, but its problems must be compared to the problems of the alternative solutions provided, and those solutions not only do not fix those problems but tend to make them worse.
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, economics is not a real science, it is social science, and, in its prediction craft, often similar to astrology.
Second, as you could see at the example of West Germany, social market economy was far better than fundamentalist capitalism to improve the lives of common people.
And above all, saying that there never was such thing as collective, is sheer idiocy because human society evolved in small collectives, not as a bunch of individuals. All this "special snowflake" individuality is a very recent invention and seems to breed arrogant arseholes first and foremost.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/number-one-problem-economy-europe [theguardian.com]
An
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And now you are talking even more out of your arse. In fact, the reduction of technological and industrial production started at the same time when the social market economy started to gradually change for the free market extremism - around the millennium.
Also, there was always a collective - the pack, the extended family, the clan, the village. And individualists were punished.
But I know that you won't let puny facts stand in the way of your convictions.
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If you actually read the parent post yo would see that he was not espousing leftist ideas, he was simply criticising right wing ones.
You are so wrapped up in your blind adherance to ideology that you cannot apparently see that both wings are stupid in so many ways. You are instead merely attacking the left to apparently defend the right. Both are blindly ideological and you are following the blind. Well done.
Now, to play the game...
(And just to note because I'm criticising your precious ideals, I am sure yo
Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Miniter for industry (Score:2)
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Re:Sounds familiar... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah it def happens in australia. When John Howard was in, my sister worked in climate research, and the government was regularly threatening researchers that if their research kept demonstrating potential hazards from climate change funding could be pulled or worse. She was pretty much told "The official government line is climate change is not real, and if you scientists dont start conforming we'll pull your funding". When the press started getting involved and her collegues started recieving death threats from crazed climate denialists (Apparently science is some sort of "communist plot") she left the country to go work in the UK.
Similar things happened to a friend of the family in the 1980s who was researching the effects of forestry on the water table, and after a report he wrote warning that the water table was getting salty due to logging in the Karri forests, his report was officially censured and he was ordered not to tell anyone. He also resigned.
Incidently this is why I sometimes want to slap assholes who claim climate scientists are doctoring reports for grants. Nothing could be further from the reality. Scientists in Australia, the US, and UK all report recieving threats from politicians that if they dont "tone down" the reports they could lose funding. As a result I believe the situation we are in, and this is a belief privately held by many researchers, is a lot worse than the official models show.
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Publish your evidence. Scan the letter and put it on a web site. Put a recording of the threat up on Youtube.
I'm not saying these scientists are lying, but I'm fucking fed up with serious accusations being made without evidence. And if you're telling the truth but you're too scared to pipe up because you want to put your career first (even though all your efforts will be in vain), you're part of the problem.
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"Laws" in politics are normative. People can be rational or irrational and politicians are no different. Scientists can be correct or incorrect. Sometimes the effects they claim decline over time. Sometimes they're just plain wrong, and sometimes the political consequences of doing what they say is impossible for the electorate to accept. Only in Plato's Republic would you want scientists dictating polic
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You Trots failed to feed and clothe your people
Where have Trots been in government since Lev Davidovich moved to Mexico?
(Answer - the USA, lots of the early neo-cons were ex Trots).
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No.
Just.... no.
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Makes me curious. What are the 51st and 52nd states?
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Except of course it isn't, save in the minds of the ideologically deranged.
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You might want to peruse the leaked IPCC report. They admit they were way wrong. It came out 2 days ago.
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Also, NASA pointed this out to them in 2010.
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Re:EBM/EBS are corrupt (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people shrugging are the worthless executives who take credit for Atlas's hard work.
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Excuse me, but don't you mean: "my museum collection, eh."?
I'm sorry, but there, I fixed it for you, eh.
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The corporations are only interested in metaphorically buggering you.
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He is destroying Canada for the sake of his Jewish masters. Mass immigration is genocide, plain and simple. Whatever is good for the Jews, is all that matters to these worthless parasites. Who prints all the money out of thin air? Why, it's the JEWS. And thus, the corrupt politicians do whatever the Jews tell them, including genociding their own people by FORCING them to accept millions of non-white INVADERS into their country. What's not to like?
Quick, better mod me down, can't have a factual discussion on Slashdot can we?
WHOO UP THERE!! I mod you up for being FUNNIER THAN HELL! Sounds like you are wearing a pointed white hat while you watch fox news. Either that or you live somewhere in the BUSH with all sorts of toys like ak 47s and the like. If you actually believe the crap you just wrote then I suggest you had better get a vasectomy because any off spring you might conceive deserve better.
But this is a discussion about how a government that essentially controls Canadian research is deliberately trying to edit the result