LondonLax

They are opportunities for everyone if you are savvy enough.

Indeed. Why do conspiracy theories always end up blaming the Jews. I never understood it.

buy my books , mainly Hey, when your right you can afford to sell your advice....

No. Wait...yes! Wait...What was the question?

Everton would be **** if they sold Lescott and Arteta. I don't think it will happen.

I agree with snowychap. The whole idea of nations is totally abitary and abstract from a human rights perspective. Why are lines drawn on maps and people within one set of lines are able to be sent aid or their leaders held acountable if they commit atocities and human rights abuses but other groups of people on the wrong side of those lines are afforded no such securities. We are all human beings. We all deserve human rights. The idea that we should allow one group of women (to take a common example) in one section of the world to be abused because it's not our country is something I am not going to support.

Why? Liberalism is a very western concept. invading a country to bring them what you or I would regard as democracy "because we know best" is a bit like invading a country to bring them Christianity because its "the one true faith" and done for largely the same condescending "civilising" reasons. I think you are confusing the will of the people with the will of their rulers. The option to chose a brutal dictatorship is always is better than no choice at all. Invading a country to "bring them christianity" is not about giving the people a free will to chose. It is about replacing one set of rules with another, so your example is flawed. Overthrowing a dictatorship who are killing its people and then giving the people the choice to decide if they want to go back to that way or choose another is a different thing again and I can't see how you could argue with the principle. The population might like being oppressed, fine you would be right and the option is there for them to go back to that. But what if they don't? The uprisings in Burma suggest they don't. The riots in Zimbabwe suggest they don't. Even the protests of the women in the artical above suggest they don't, in that example there are now female MP's who get a say and can amend the bill to help protect their elected representatives. Human rights should be just that. Rights for all humans, not just the ones lucky enough to have been born in places with tolerant rulers. It is a cop out to say "Those people are beyond our help even if they want it because thats just the way things are".

You really do have a low opinion of Tony Blair's intelligence if you think that. Well I was obviously refering to his millitary intellegence. I think he believed what he was being told. Perhaps we will one day find out the details of who knew what and when but I doubt it to be honest.

For me it did. Lies, deceit and incompetence are a very small price to pay compared to the hope the Kurdish and Shi'ite people of Iraq now have of a proper life where they had no hope before. They now have the same rights we do to elect a government who can lie to them and act incompetantly on their behalf. We do take it for granted how good we have it compaired to the majority of the people on this planet. Joking aside, I actually think Tony Blair did believe what he was saying. I think his intelligence was poor but he actually believed it in good faith that Saddam was a threat and if the war would remove a brutal dictator as well then all the better. History has shown the first side was incorrect but the secondary side effect still applied. In conclusion, it didn't help us because Saddam turnd out to not be a threat to us but it still helped the people of that country so the net result is still a positive one for me.

It might not be what the war was about but that doesn't change the fact that he and his party was removed as a result of this war. For that reason it was worth it.

And, at the end of the day, why should we expect them to? Or the Iraqis? Or any of the "non democratic nations"? Maybe there is more to politics than liberalism. Sure, it works for us more or less, but we have a long liberal tradition, going back 200 years or more. Even so, for most of those 200 years we excluded one group or another from our "democracy". Maybe expecting cultures where they dont have that liberal tradition to suddenly just accept that philosophy overnight and understand how to implement it effectively is being just a tad condescending? Who gave us the right to decide what's right and wrong? You can't force a population to choose liberalism but you can give them the oppostunity to do so. Currently many people do not have the choice, their government system is physically forced on them. If we leave Iraq, it settles down and they vote back in a dictatorial form of government then fair enough.

I think the next generation of Iraqis will grow up in a country where there is equal representation in parliament of people standing up for their own rights instead of living under a dictatorship representing a minority group but staying in power through force. When Saddam died he was meant to have his son take over who was even more brutal than he was by all accounts. For that reason I think the war was worth it. I think we should look at taking a more active part in Zimbabwe and Burma against their brutal governments. The idea that the people dieing there are not British so they are not our problem doesn't wash with me.

It really is a shame the government didn't build up large budget surpluses in the boom years like many other governments just in case we had a down turn. What I can't fathom is how Brown claimed he ended the boom and bust cycle when he wasn't putting money away during the boom years.

Classic post, I'm still laughing. Mushrooms were like that with me - they never made me hallucinate, even when smaller quantities of the same batch were having that effect on others. What they did do though (especially when washed down with some white wine) was produce that "detailed concentration" effect that you describe so well. With me it was mainly noticeable with music. I can remember listening to - appropriately enough - The Byrds' "Eight Miles High", and I found that I could listen to every nuance of every separate instrument and voice with equal attention, simultaneously. Absolutely amazing. I love mushrooms. My best ever drug experience was with them.

I tried 'Cake' once. It's a 'made up' drug from eastern europe. It did my head in but I laughed about it for a while.

You sound like a few tottenham fans I know.

It's more likely they will play in the 6(7) nations because all there players are based in Europe. They would be flying long haul for every match in the Tri nations. The problem with either option is do they make the effort to play the home games in South America or do they just stick with basing it all in Europe.

Statistically, what is it that 9 out of 10 people enjoy? Gang rape.

Humans have known the world was round for a lot longer than popular culture would have you believe. Ancient Greeks suspected the world was round and by the middle ages it was common knowledge. Anyone with any sort of education know the world was round by the time Columbus set sail. The dispute was actually about the distance to china heading west from Europe not whether it was possible or not. Most scientists at the time thought it was far too far for any of their ships to travel without seeing land to restock (and they were right). Columbus thought their calculations were wrong however and the distance was much shorter, he was wrong but fortunatly for him he stumbled onto another mass of land half way that he could land on and get food/freshwater.

I couldnt find much Tiesto on there and I wanted to listen to Seenenluft - Manila but it's not there either so i was a bit dissappointed. Youtube still has more music. I guess it will take time to populate.

Well for your first question, evolution takes a lot of time. We happened to get there first. There were other creatures like neanderthals who may well be able do all those things had they not become extinct and perhaps many thousands of years in the future other species will develop those abilities. In you second question I believe God is a man made idea. It's is useful for humans to invent a god or gods for so many reasons and we have been doing it in every period of history in almost every part of the world.

But even if that were true and there was an Adam and Eve and all Humans came from their perfect relatives the bible is really pushing it when it asks you to believe it happened again after the "great flood". Now we are all descended from Noah's family as well. Were they all perfect too? And every breeding pair of animals? Were they all genetically perfect? How did they all get on that boat anyway? Did the marsupials happily hop round the world to Australia? And the Bison casually walk back to the Americas to start their population growth over there? If you are going to start taking it literally but there are things within that are demonstratably wrong then that casts doubt over the whole book. You would have to start questioning if any of it is right. It may contain some historical accuracies within the legends and stories of the people of that time but to use is as a scientifically accurate way to explain the history of our universe is literally absurd and quite dangerous as it closes the mind off to possibilities which may be right but do not fit the bible model.

Well that is the secret of the success of horoscopes and the fame of Nostrodamus types. Just keep every thing quite vague and general, don't put in any hard dates or facts. The believers will be convinced and the sceptics will have a difficult time pinning down the inaccuracies.

There definitely isn't a God, and that's why. Salted popcorn, UGH! What is it with you english and your sweet popcorn. That is kiddy stuff you grow out of when you are 10. Salted is the only way to go.

Actually the bit at the end says the opposite...according to Exodus...many many Egyptians left Egypt and became alien residents and became part of the nation of Israel. Under the Mosaic law those alien residents were to be treated kindly the same as any Israelite. All God asked was that Pharaoh let the Israelites go...however they were slaves and the Egyptian's no doubt made good use of them ..using them to do all the tasks they didn't wish to carry out. It was Pharaoh who bought the plagues on his people by ignoring Moses's plea...according to Exodus Well my understanding was that god actually asked Moses to ask the egyptions to let them go. That is a bit different, having a slave leader ask to have slaves freed was probably not an unusual request of a Pharoah. I'm sure if god had asked the Pharoah more directly he my have had better results in convincing him and everyone would have lived happily ever after. It's a bit unfair on the Egyptions though to lay waste to them for not believing in the Jewish god when they had no reason to believe in a Jewish god. There was no bible for them to learn about back then and God wasn't making himself available to anyone but the Jews.