catzaa

> even though every sane person has to acknowledge that legalizing drugs in part is more effective than enforcing more rigid controls,

No it is not. Two examples of this are Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

In both these countries there are zero tolerance for drug users and drug traffickers and the results show. Smoking Marijuana almost teenagers in Japan is basically unheard of.

It seems that laws in the USA and Europe are not strict enough to act as a deterrence. If many of these countries adopted the death penalty or similar penalties for trafficking, then perhaps something could be done about it.

(Singapore executes drug traffickers. I don't know what legal punishments there are for traffickers in Japan, but I know the social punishments are severe. A family will often cut contact with a relative if he is sentenced for a minor crime. Sports stars, tenured professors and celebrities will loose their jobs if they had a criminal offence even for something completely unrelated to their career. Quite different from the attention that washed out American celebrities get.)

Why? Human beings have many lies that they belieeve are true, and we are not poorer for it.

(E.g. Unconditional love, true love, etc...).

> I took a step back on the big picture analyzing groups attacking "Climate Science" with obvious interests behind.

So? There are other groups promoting 'Climate Science' with obvious interests behind them (Al Gore's political interests, companies that may benefit from carbon trading, science cliques, companies working on carbon sequestration programmes, etc...). Don't think that those who promote global warming are as pure as the driven snow.

Trying to demonise all those who question the reality of AGW is not conducive to a robust debate on the topic.

Maybe. But I am sure that if records show that a product is delayed, then the customer service rep should have a bit of leeway to make the customer happy.

> When you say "someone else" in this sentence, you have to mean someone different.

I mean someone not part of the cultural, language or national grouping.

> I disagree. I believe someone with a different skin color or a different culture would fight for me and protect my rights

That may be a nice sentiment, but historically this has not happened (you also conflate skin colour with ethnic, cultural and language identity). Probably the best example where “other people” did not fight for a certain group’s rights is language rights.

In Eastern Europe, many Russians are finding their language and identity marginalised.

Tibet is another example where the majority does not protect the language, religious and cultural rights of a minority.

Other historic examples are the Basque in Spain, Pigmies in the DRC, Tamils in Sri Lanka, people of Chinese ancestry in Malaysia, Kurds in Turkey, etc…

> The Greeks had a nationalistic loyalty to their particular city-state. This ended when the Persians showed up, who were orders of magnitude less appealing to the Greeks, and that did away with a lot of inter-Greek warfare and nationalism.

By replacing it with pan-Greek nationalism? The Greeks shared a lot of attributes (language, ideology, etc…). What you are railing against is “Geographic nationalism”. There is more to nationalism than that.

> I believe the same can be said of races and religions these days. Conflict between races is like conflict between the various Greek city-states: A damn waste.

The word “race” is a loaded word.

IMHO nationalism is not a waste. Each and every group should have the right to their own culture, religion, language and self-determination. As the UN Charter states:

> To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace

> All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development

> We've got bigger problems to solve, and can probably work on a better level than that.

To what end? Are problems really so big that the religious and cultural identities should be destroyed? Are our “problems” really bigger than a hundred years ago (when almost everyone died of Polio)?

I think that the common trend in many places is to replace culture with some Americanised version of culture and replace all native languages with English. I think this is a huge step backwards.

There is nothing wrong with a group wanting to protect their language, culture and identity (what you label as XXX nationalism).

IMHO, it is naive for individuals to assume that someone else would protect/fight for their rights.

South Africa's national language is bad English :)

While I do think that everyone should learn English in SA, research has shown that mother tongue education (especially at primary and secondary levels) are extremely important.

There are a lot of parents doing their children a disservice by sending them to English schools.

The world is a lot more complex than that. Germany was not treated well after the First World War. It was almost certain that there will be another war and a dictator would come to power (the only question was when, and what the dictator's name would be).

This does not mean that everything the German army did was good or justified (e.g. the Holocaust). And neither was the allies knights in shining armour (firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo comes to mind).

My grandparents (although not German citizens) were fiercely supportive of Germany in WW2, as where many people. This stemmed mostly from the UK’s treatment of people in its colonies.

That may be true for most emails.

But I guess that large webmail providers can band together and ensure that e-mails between their systems are encrypted (i.e. all messages sent by gmail to other gmail addresses or hotmail addresses are encrypted).

Then users would just use HTTPS to check their mail and everything would be encrypted.

This is not perfect, but it is at least a stopgap.

> Just to pick on one point: what conceivable moral logic leads one to choose democratic representation based on the financial health of their existing government?

Wasn't the idea to give each state to senators so that populous states do not encroach on less populous states?

If California gets many senators, they will surely vote to get federal money to fix their deficit.

> Have you travelled in Europe ? Say from the Polish/Russian boarder (or the Romanian one) to the coast of the Atlantic? > In spite of those 'requirements' the differences are vast, and yet, for the most part people still live where they lived before the borders opened up. Not as stark as in South Africa, for sure, but very real nonetheless.

All the poorer countries in the EU are stable democratic countries. They are poorer, but are set for enormous growth (that is why the richer countries wants them part of the EU – because they have much better growth potential than the most developed countries).

Also note that those crossing borders in the EU can’t vote in their newly adopted country (since they are still citizens of their home country). So there are restrictions on many government services also.

> Borders are arbitrary constructs created to foster areas of artificial scarcity and control of people, the world is a much better place without them.

Private property is also an “arbitrary construct” but it doesn’t mean that they are bad. Borders allow government investment of taxpayer money in a country (this being used to benefit the tax payers).

> It seems to me that you are scared of something, South Africa is a place that has a history of very strong inequality, likely the shockwaves of the change there will reverberate for a long time, especially because of the enormous differences between those that have and those that don't.

Illegal immigration could cause the government to collapse, sending South Africa into a downward spiral and de-industrialising the country.

You have not addressed any of my concerns, but try to justify it with the EU (which is only a union with very select and stable countries, with them not becoming citizens of their “adopted” country).

> I've heard these arguments time and again while the European borders were dissolved, NONE of it came true.

There is a huge difference. For a country to go into the EU, it has a lot of requirements - it isn't just an arbitrary opening of the borders.

The EU would never allow a backwards developing country to become part.

> People that don't like a level playing field can't be much of a player.

The effect of mass immigration is usually worse on the lower strata of society (plumbers, manual labourers) - not me and you.

And yes, there are people who would not be able to compete - we can't all be rocket scientists.

> able to make forward movements rather than two steps forward one step back.

The result of such an approach would be a repeated one step back (as with the above process I described).

> It's entirely for selfish reasons

There is nothing wrong with rational self-interest. Whether you like it or not, you act in your own self-interest repeatedly. Nothing prevents you from moving to 3rd world countries (instead of moving a third world country to you).

> Pieces of paper to hold people out of places that they wish to go to ought to be a thing of the past.

Why? People only come into my home when I invite them inside. Why should it be different with countries?

> there is no way that 4 million illegal immigrants would converge on any place in the world because they would be bringing their homes with them, literally.

You would be surprised.

> The only people scared of that are those that are afraid to compete, and with the headstart that we've got competition should be the least of our worries.

Competition is the least of your problems. The first and biggest problem is crime – crime levels (including organised crime and violent crime) that increases extremely rapidly.

The second problem is any public services that will simply get flooded – a good example in my country is health care. You will simply end up without access to decent health care.

The third problem is private property. Immigrants will squat on your land depriving you of its use (without compensation). If you own land near the land where they squatted, it will be virtually worthless because of the associated theft and crime (see point one).

And fourthly, if immigrants vote, they will most likely vote for a kleptocratic socialist-lair which will increase your taxes and thoroughly destroy what is left of the country.

The UK has good laws (you can get a highly skilled Visa without major problems).

Unfortunately some of the nicest countries it is difficult (e.g. Ireland).