Note I said country that has had power, you can't really abuse something that you don't have. Yes, Canada does have a military but they seem to be complete isolationists so they have done very little internationally (positive or negative). Also, People tend to hate/dislike whoever is in charge. I'm not saying the US is completely in charge but it basically does whatever it wants and most other countries do what it says (close enough to an authority figure to me).

Note: I don't know very many specifics of Canadian history other than they beat us in the war of 1812, so I may not be right on that first point :p

Yes, it isn't as much as Japan lost, but you might be forgetting than Japan was trying to take over the world at the time. If they weren't dropped, more lives probably would have been lost in American and Japanese lives due to a direct assault. Remember how hard they fought over those worthless Islands in Indonesia? Think of how they would have fought on their own soil (strapping dynamite to their own children and using them as weapons).

Incase I misinterpreted your point (or you mine), I just wanted to make sure you knew that I was refutting his comparison of bombings that happen in the UK to the ones on Sept. 11, not saying it was the worst loss of life in history...

Nope, Japan still had millions of suicide soldiers on the main Island (aka the entire population who thought their Emperor was a god). They didn't surrender after having one city obliterated in the blink of an eye, and a warning of another. If they were nearly beaten and ready to surrender they would have done so after the first bomb was dropped (as Spuzzum said, they probably thought the US was exaggerating so not surrendering before the first makes sense).

And no, they didn't want to drop it on Tokyo, thus directly attacking their god/Emperor which would have caused them to likely never surrender. They wanted to beat Japan into submission, not annihilate the entire population.

The hub is not meant for sharing MP3 files or any other non-BYOND files, for that matter. As Kusanagi suggests, please find web space elsewhere and make it available there. I'm sure some free web hosts do still exist.

Thanks.

Alright...You think that I could leave it up just today while I try to find a free host that can fit me needs?

::DBHavenMaster::

English wrote:

Note I said country that has had power, you can't really abuse something that you don't have. Yes, Canada does have a military but they seem to be complete isolationists so they have done very little internationally (positive or negative). Also, People tend to hate/dislike whoever is in charge. I'm not saying the US is completely in charge but it basically does whatever it wants and most other countries do what it says (close enough to an authority figure to me).

Heh, well, truth be told, there's some more of that international underestimation -- I won't say bigotry this time -- that we've come to love from our southerly neighbours. ;-)

Canada developed the KANDU nuclear reactor, the Canadarm articulated shuttle-arm, our military is about 1/20th the size of the Americans (in comparison to just over 1/10th the population, that basically means half the size per capita), and Canada has one of the grandest import and export trades on the planet.

Our Peacekeepers helped disarm minefields and keep the peace in Bosnia, Herzegovina, etc. -- also having to obey strict orders not to return fire, even if attacked.

Canadian industrial and technological concerns developed the Ballard fuel cell, a pollution-less and efficient energy-source that operates on the fusion of hydrogen and oxygen into water (not cold fusion, mind you -- just creating water and siphoning off the two free electrons), that, if implemented into cars (Ballard's been a little slow on the uptake there, however), could clean the city streets, for a fraction of the cost that gasoline costs.

Our Air Force is second-to-none -- our Navy and Coast Guard are practically non-existent, granted, but our ground troops aren't anything short of experienced and technologically up-to-date. The Canadian-born C8 assault rifle can run circles around the AR-16, and we employ all of the technology that America uses as well, like the M1 and M80.

Sure, we're probably more deficient in some areas, but I could bet we're superior in others.

And, this is not to mention that our culture is extremely urbanised and technologically-minded -- even with our vast plains, less than 3% of the population is employed in agriculture. B.C.'s economy is centred on a highly-skilled, highly-educated workforce (much like Silicon Valley, only smaller). Eastern Canada is an industrial megalopolis, and Western Canada is a technologist's dream. =)

Canada has extremely strong ties to the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, and Japan -- Japan and the U.S. being our predominant trade partners.

In short, if Canada suddenly ceased to exist overnight, the world would be a vastly different place (aside from the fact that the sudden gap in the Earth's crust would cause the world to deflate like a balloon =P).

I do fully expect that if Canada and America suddenly became horrible enemies, Canada would be annexed, however -- Canada has far too little military force to defend that much land. Granted, I'm pretty sure all we'd care about is defending the land between the 60th and 49th parallels, but that's still a ton of land.

Yes, it isn't as much as Japan lost, but you might be forgetting than Japan was trying to take over the world at the time. If they weren't dropped, more lives probably would have been lost in American and Japanese lives due to a direct assault. Remember how hard they fought over those worthless Islands in Indonesia? Think of how they would have fought on their own soil (strapping dynamite to their own children and using them as weapons).

I should probably take the time right here to admit that I didn't learn a whole lot about World War II -- at least, not on the Pacific Front. All I really know is that Japan made an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour, without declaring hostilities, and the conflict escalated with America having to move its aircraft carriers over to Australia and Indonesia, where Japan's elite pilots tore the heck out of the inexperienced new recruits of the American Navy, until America eventually dropped the bomb.

But I think dynamite on children is a bit of an exaggeration... =P

Incase I misinterpreted your point (or you mine), I just wanted to make sure you knew that I was refutting his comparison of bombings that happen in the UK to the ones on Sept. 11, not saying it was the worst loss of life in history...

I know. I was just being devil's advocate. It's usually a pretty good eye-opener -- gives you new light into the other side -- when you defend things you don't actually support. In this case, not really, however. =)

Gee, no, I can't say that I have! It's only one of the most talked about things in the world! =P

I still don't understand why people aren't catching onto the "devil's advocate" viewpoint. I'm trying to bring educated support to replace Hutchy's extremely crude arguments -- I'm not saying I agree with that side.

Canada suffered the blow too, you know -- aside from the fact that dozens of visiting Canadians were slain, our trade is closely tied with America's. If America slumps, we slump (and if America gains, we slump =P).

English wrote:

All we're taught about Canada is that they have lots of snow and trees, plus most Canadians are really eskimos. Well, that is a bit of an eggageration, but not much :p

It's an excessive exaggeration. =P

Canada's Prairies are pretty much exactly the same as the American Eastern Seaboard, climate-wise. The mainland of British Columbia is warmer (on-par with the Central States), and Eastern Canada is a bit colder, but no less colder than New York. If you have the time, you might want to take a look at a summer high and winter low temperature map of North America. ;-)

(The Vancouver area is mild all year round, thanks to the wonderful West Coast Marine climate, which is native here and in part of Europe, and that's it.)

Once you start getting into the territories, there's permafrost a few metres beneath the surface, but snow is only on the ground for four or five months out of the year. Most of that area isn't habitable anyway, so it doesn't represent Canada. Past the 60th parallel, no one really gives a hoot what happens up there. The Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories have the smallest government representation in Canada.

And according to Statistics Canada, less than 300,000 native Eskimos live in this country. That's under 1% of the population. =)

DBHavenMaster wrote:

...power in cowardly acts.

I dont agree with what they did, or sympathise with them at all. However I wouldnt call giving your life for a cause you belive in 'cowardly', no matter how wrong the cause was.
Sorry, the media have just been annoying me when they say it.
-DogMan
PS: I just want to say again, Im not calling them Hero's, or saying I wish I had of done it. If I had the chance Id still beat them down with barb-bats.

PPS: Also, I seem to remember something about America being warned. I cant really remember though. It might have been just a rumor.

Canada's Prairies are pretty much exactly the same as the American Eastern Seaboard, climate-wise.

I have this disturbing image of a woman in a goalie mask sitting on the front porch of a Canadian plantation, fanning herself and saying "Ah declayah, Ah could use anothah Molson julep."

Gughunter wrote:

...saying "Ah declayah, Ah could use anothah Molson julep."

Or, "...anothah MooseHead Spritzer." =)

A good resource for educating lesser mortals about Canada is http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/index.html.

Being half-Canadian, half-Eskimo, (from my mom) and half-Texan (from my dad), *and* having relatives spread across the land from St. John's Newfoundland, Goose Bay Labrador, Toronto Ontario, Fort McMurray Alberta, to Vancouver BC, I've happily grown up seeing the differences between Canada and its nearest southern neighbor.

Canada is far from the conception of nothing but eskimos and snow. I remember during several visits to Goose Bay, Labrador (where the only good way to get there is to travel by ferry through the icebergs that hang out in the Strait, even in Summer) that we had to be on alert for evacuation because of the threat of surprise forest fires (on a scale much larger than what was recently experienced Colorado (a side note: the Colorado fires concerned me too because my mom is an archeologist at Mesa Verde) - the place was too hot and dry!

I certainly do not agree about the loss of life during the trade center crashes, but I do think this was a much too late slap in the face for the American government (and the people to some extent).

America's representatives *had* credible warning of this possibility as far back as March of that year (according to my sources of friends and ex-coworkers in the AirForce, yet these warnings from American intelligence agencies were brushed aside as not circumstantial enough to warrant informing the people. And it was not politically advantageous to do so. If there is someone to blame, it should be upon the failure of the American Congress to do its job in protecting the people. There have been countless reports made concerning "homeland" security that even Colin Powell himself (when still a military man) had expressed concerns before and after the attacks... but nothing was done.

The terrorists themselves cannot be entirely held to blame either: from childhood on, they have been set upon by their neighbors and other super powers (the U.S. and Russia being the most dominant ones) whose interest was in securing control over the existing governments for political or economic reasons, as opposed to actually finding ways of helping the majority of the lands 'people' out of poverty, famine, and disease.

I've done some digging into news archives and political discussion groups, and I do come up with info of leaders of the middle-east as far back as the 1960's requesting various forms of health and education aid from the U.S. and others - apparently to no avail. It is no wonder that their cultures have learned to hate much of the world - the U.S. being at the top of the list...

Again, the tragic loss of life is horrible, but maybe this was an important enough event to help the U.S. and its people to realize that they are not immune anymore to issues that the rest of the world has faced for generations... there should be efforts to *correct* the problems - not frustrate them even more...