St John’s is indeed in Newfoundland. Perhaps you’re thinking of St John?
Little hoofies, heh. A bit tactless, but not too far off the mark.
Aha! It’s St. John’s in NF, in NB, it’s Saint John, and while the city is close to the Bay of Fundy, that’s a huge bay that forms the southern border of the whole province. Saint John has got its own river and harboUr.
Heh, there’s also a Negro Point across the river.
Not sure where the bidding thing comes in here. Should the US gov’t gone with a higher bidder? Seems a case of: You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
BTW, the article clearly states they’ve identified the problem. Software. Yup. The devil’s in the software.
Not what I said. It’s how Canadians are dealing/responding to this pressure. We seem to be fumbling and whining more than we are rising to the challenge.
Plus, I don’t think the US is asking for permission to do fly by’s of the Capital building.
So we let them test this silly missile system and we automatically lose our national identity? I find the US television programming flying through Canada’s air space far more harmful to Canadian identity. In fact, we as Canadians are so concerned about our national identity that an entire black market TV satelite dish industry has evolved because regular cable programming just doesn’t have enough US content for the average Canadian viewer.
That would be a pair of morons. A bunch would imply more than two, you m… oh, just forget it…
:rolleyes:
Really? The entire history?
What about the pyramids? I bet they cost a pretty penny and look how useful they turned out to be!
So, the Canadians diplomatically opted out of a flawed, stupid system that has never worked, is politically improper to begin with, and when they do, the U.S. begins openly and rudely shunning them…and this is the fault of Canadians?
What exactly is the proper response to Condi’s in-very-bad-taste action? Submission to U.S. demands? Nuclear anniliation? I think a well-spoken, calm, “Uh, hey, you guys are dorks” statement is an appropriate response, myself.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, bunch is a group, and group is “a number of people”, and last time I checked 2 is a number.
More useful then the missile defense system, which I’ll wager will never see full operation. Might as well fill the Grand Canyon with the cash and light it on fire, at least that would be fun to watch.
Adjusting for dollars and all, what would be a bigger waste of money. (Don’t say Iraq war) 
Thanks FinnAgain and other Americans for pointing for going to bat for us on this. It’s a good reminder that relations are not breaking down as certain American “diplomats”* and certain Bush-worshippers in the Canadian government would have it.
I think most Americans realize that a) the system doesn’t work, b) nothing Canada’s military contribution could do would make it better, and c) we’re a different country, and that’s okay.
*These days, this word, in this context, seems to need scare quotes
Yeah, ‘cause usually it was his wife who was takin’ 'em for a ride…
C’mon, that’s easy! I’ve posted this before, but:
Guide for Americans to the Canadian National Anthem:
There are only eight lines to the Canadian National Anthem, but they make them do a lot of work.
The one line that isn’t repeated that you need to know is:
That one has to be belted out.
Otherwise, you work with four short passages that together make an iambic pentameter line:
“For thee,” “O Canada,” “on guard,” and “we stand.”
These are sung together in various orders during the song, the order apparently being determined by flipping a loonie three times before commencing singing.
The actual lyrics are
It is inadvisable to sing, “O Canada, I have an infected gland” as someone trying to remember the actual words may hear you.
Alternatively, sing portions of the Marsellaise to the “O Canada” tune, and haughtily explain to anyone who looks askance at you that you are “singing the French lyrics; don’t they support bilingualism?”
Yeah, Maggie was a crazy tart… syphilis will do that to you! 
Okay folks… what’s the point of repeatedly insisting that the missile defense system currently doesn’t work? It’s an over statement of the obvious. The first airplane the Wright brothers built also didn’t work so good. It took a little time. A little patience. Seems to me flight wasn’t an entirely fruitless pursuit.
You know, MS Windows didn’t work that great at first either… and now… well, okay… bad example… but still, what’s 80% of you using?
Look, Martin (and previously Chretien) didn’t handle it well and embarassed the Bush administration with these overly dramatic rants on how evil the US is. If you talk smack, expect to get slapped in the mouth. Martin et all just need to improve their diplomacy skills.
Even if they got the system working 100% it’s still fucking useless, that’s the point. All someone has to do is shoot two missiles. We should be dumping the money into actual threats, like securing shipping containers or something.
I think it’s Bush and Condi that need to improve their “take it or leave it” diplomacy.
Damn it… we expected one Spanish Inquisition but not two! :rolleyes:
And once again, it’s not a ‘this or the other’ scenario. We should be doing both and then some.
Why? It’s working. They’re winning. Look at Europe… they’re all kissing and making up. If you’ve got the upper hand, why do you need to negotiate from a position on you knees?
Offiical American Reponse:
Who gives a fuck?
-Joe
Hamish and World Eater: thanks much .
No, it’s not a case of damned if you do, etc…
I’m simply pointing out that outside the public sector, especially where government porkbarrel projects are concerned, there is little accountability. Remember the weapons systems that Cheney cut? Those were in development for a long time, sucking down millions of dollars, but they were simply axed. The government isn’t accountable to anybody, so you don’t get the highest standard of work from them.
Remember the M-16? When we sent it to Vietnam it jammed so often and so horribly that many American soldiers lost their lives due to substandard weaponry. This obviously didn’t work out as planned.
Actually…
So, they’re not sure what went wrong, something similar has gone wrong before and they didn’t fix it, and whether it’s hardware of software, it still doesn’t work.
Okay, so you don’t believe you should acquiesce to the demands of the US government, but what you’re doing is still somehow wrong. How do you advise your government go about it, other than refusing to play ball and calling us out when we act like petulant children?
No, simply to have carte blanche in your airspace when we declare an emergency situation. Do you think it was wrong for your government to ask that if we were going to use your airspace, we at least obtain permission first?
If you let America set your policy, use your airspace as we see fit, control your defenseive posture and policy, and do all of this for a questionable, at best, system…
It’s not so much about losing national identity as becoming an American lapdog. Countires are allowed to act in their own best interest, and our attempts to bully you into doing our bidding are, quite frankly, beneath us.
Except international law does not restrict the projection of radio or telivision signals. It does grant soverignty of airspace in regards to aircraft being flown in said airspace.
I don’t see this as a question of identity, but I do see how people could see that. There is, of course, a difference between people choosing to watch the TeeVee they like, and with a country being bullied into giving up its soverign rights to its own airspace.
Identity politics themselves aren’t a problem. It’s when your identity becomes an expression of self-superiority that it becomes extreme nationalism. The US, despite frequent accusations to the contrary, is awesomely tolerant of and assimilative of foreign cultures and peoples.
The real problem with Canada is that its defined by what it is not: America. And these sorts of wars of words will always be with us until they either assimilate totally or find a positive idenitity.
I don’t personally support the misile system, as god as it mgiht be for promoting certain space-oriented technologies. I favor the laser-defensive system. Already much better. However, Bush and his staff do believe in the technology, and they may be correct. And there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with them trying to stump, plead, or prod for others to join them on it. That is the entire point of having diplomatic corps.
Smiling Bandit: International treaties prevent the deployment of orbital weaponry, which is most likely the only way a pragmatic laser defense net would work.
There are only so many dollars, so many people, and so much time. We can focus our resources on fixing problems which need to be fixed, and can be fixed. Or we can focus our resources on a problem which most likely doesn’t exist, and which right now we can’t even figure out how to fix.
Personally, I’m much more worried about suitcase nukes or a nuke loaded aboard a ship and detonated in a harbor. There currently exists only one nation that I am aware of which would post a neuclear ICBM threat to us, and we appear to have them contained currently.
It’s not working.
The nations of Europe know that if Iraq goes to hell, the middle east will most likely be close behind. It is, in a very realpolitik sense, in their best interest to help us clean up our messes, before the fallout lands in their front yard.
Moreoever, our power-grabbing right after we toppled Sadaam’s regime and the fact that we wouldn’t share bidding on reconstruction (and indeed gave Halliburton no-bid contracts), alienated our allies.
Hell, the Spanish government fell because they were seen as too buddy buddy with us. Unless I’m mistaken, most European citizens distrust Bush, his motives, and his policies. In recent polls, Europeans actually listed Bush as the greatest danger to world peace, bar none. I do not think our unilateralism and absolutism is ‘working’.
Huh? That comment makes no sense.
Anyway, launching multiple missiles is a rather quick way to get around the system. It’s almost like we’re dealing with a modern day Maginot line. It’s geared to do one thing, and that can be circumvented about 100 different ways.
Lucky we have unlimited money…oh wait a minute.
Spend the money on securing the ports, then if some is left over, secure the borders, if some is left over buy our cities some hazmat gear, if some is left over…etc, etc. After we’ve solved jaywalking, then put it towards missile defense.
What’s the more realistic scenario?
a) Country launches ICBM and the whole world knows who launched it.
b) Country quietly helps terrorists smuggle nuke into US “real quiet like”
Lip service my boy, lip service. Only in your insane world would years of damage to global diplomacy is erased by a three day visit. Btw it doesn’t look like Putin was kissing any ass.
This may be the first Pit thread that gets moved to GD!
But now the US military has some of the best weaponry, no? Things changed for the better, yes? Technologies improved.
No. <sigh> You’re right. As of the last test and post on the subject… it still doesn’t work. Time to trash the lot and send everyone home.
No, we should not have refused on the grounds of a national identity crisis and the US being the boogie man trying to control Canadian sovereignty.
Tell you what, if we can get the aggressors lobbing the missiles to ask our permission to enter our airspace first and then we’ll insist that the US do the same.
Permission or not, do you really think for a second that the US will hesitate to enter our airspace due to a perceived threat? They’ll do it and if anybody is still around and living, they’ll extend their sincere appologies. What’s Canada going to do? Declare war? How fast was Canadian airspace shut down on 9/11? Seems that whenever the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold anyway.
The US military is our defensive strategy, policy and posture. Canada would shit the minute a single missile came accross the norther cap.
No it’s not. I’d rather we were bullied by the US than say, the former Soviet Union or some other unfriendly regime du jour. Diplomacy is a negotiation not a bullying match. Canada has not done a great job of it, is all I’m saying.
Yeah, but let us not be hypocrites about it. We like most US culture. We just don’t like to admit that we like it.
Canada!
Fuck, yeah!
I’m glad we opted out of an idea that was gonna cost megabucks with limited, if any, return. I can vaguely imagine a laser-based system 20 years from now if the Americans throw a trillion or two at it, but how that’s going to protect anybody against terorrism escapes me.