Acute - I´m ok with 1st trimester abortion as it is about that time embryo becomes fetus. Apparently it is somewhere near 8th weeks so I´d be ok with limiting the procedure up to that week as well. Why do I not consider abortion of embrio a murder? Because it is not a human being yet biologically, it´s just a bunch of cells with prospect to become one. However, unlike those whose beliefs make them think otherwise, I´d rather not impose my views on others. If you consider it a child, you won´t terminate pregnancy whether or not it is inconvenient for you. I don´t actually think I´d be able to terminate a pregnancy however inconvenient it was for me, but I do not consider myslef to be in position to make this decision for other women. After all, women are not incubators and their rights to decide about their body should be respected. Just like nobody can force you to donate your kidney to somebody who needs it, only because you´re a match, nobody should be able to tell a woman what to do with her uterus. But it´s not really about animals, so let me finish here.

About the providers - like I said, I was simply too lazy to do that so I conveniently assumed big food chains have big inspections. I may be wrong, though. I have no idea how humane farms are as the only time I´ve seen an animal slaughtered was when i was about 6 and on my grandparents´ farm. They did not have any big animals, just a few chickens and a tobacco fields, but their neighbours had sheep. One day they killed a ram and it wasn´t a nice sight, the poor animal was terrified when one man held him by the head and the other one slashed his throat. i couldn´t watch it. Even decapitated chickens running around beheaded did not make me as disgusted.

I´d never say Cloggies have their heads "screwed around", quite contrary, they are lovely, hard working people with laws that do not limit personal freedom as much as possible. Also, as for a tiny country reclaimed from the sea, they do pretty well.

Human trafficking is illegal in the Netherlands as far as I know. Is it bad for it to be illegal?

The comment about law was to Stumpy, not you. She said a few posts pack that we don´t need laws are people are not dim. I tend to think otherwise

Agreed about sex with minors.

I did not say we did not need laws but some laws treats us as if we are stupid and need to be guided like sheeps.  Unfortunatly looks like too many people are adle minded and have blind faith in their law makers and government representatives... 

I do not need a law that tells me what color my house has to be, I find that a law that dictates what language I have to teach my children repressive and a law that tell me how to slaughter an animal when the people who passes that law probably never set foot on a farm and propably do not know a thing about farming is absurde.

Here is an article from Canada free press, makes you think and take a good look at everything around you.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2506

Just how much stupidity can one world tolerate?

“Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.”  - JOHN WAYNE

Is stupid the new smart? Is dumb the new wise? Is oblivious the new aware?

I am prompted to pose these simple questions in light of current events as witnessed through the probing lenses of television cameras and the scribblings of the popular print media, not to mention the prolific news sources found on the Internet and the overcrowded field occupied by far too many bloggers all jostling elbow-to-elbow for my rapidly diminishing attention span.

Have you noticed over the past decade or so how television, movies, magazines and newspapers glorify the antics of really stupid people? I think the movie Dumb and Dumber opened the floodgates to this trend.

Then again, it might have been launched with the creation of the 1950s sitcoms. At that time dad was portrayed as a fairly intelligent creature who could guide his household and steer his children in the right direction. Mom was really the power behind the throne but dad didn’t know it. If he did, he kept his mouth shut. And the kids? Well, they actually had something to learn from old dad. What a concept.

Now fast forward to the New Millennium and the wonderful world of commercials. It is in that world where you see how the producers of these mini-dramas really view the component parts of today’s family.

In their world, dad, if he is in the family picture at all, is a bumbler, a fool and a gluttonous boor who wolfs down pizzas while still in the box and who has absolutely no idea how to do anything from hammering a nail to tying his shoes. Of course he is uncertain as to whether his shoes are on the proper foot. Dad is usually portrayed as a pathetic clown, a shell of a man, who is virtually irrelevant to family life, except as a supplier of money for cars, cell phones and video games.

Enter mom. Vivacious, smart, impeccably groomed, harboring a razor-sharp encyclopedic mind choc full of wonderful solutions to any problem imaginable. Meanwhile her task to guide dad around prepping him to do menial tasks around the house if she can pry his big, fat ##### off the couch to do anything remotely physical requiring the motor skills of a slug.

But all is not lost in these dysfunctional families. There are always the children. Yes, the children. It is they who really run the household in the commercial world. They also run mom and dad. It is the kids who choose the home for the family and how to decorate it; they pick the family vehicles by color and style to match their peers at school or face a beating, stores in which to shop,holiday destinations, clothing, hair styles and the family pet which they expect dad to look after if he can find the instructions.

And these kids are oh so smart. At age six they can tell you how to fix your car, build an addition to your house (they don’t actually work or do chores though), tell you how to speak and when to go to bed. And that’s the good stuff. With their computer skills they can bring us to the brink of nuclear war, destroy the economy and on a good day, wipe out the memory banks of half the computers in North America. For that, they are treated like comic book heroes.

Meanwhile, commercials you will never see are those showing kids actually learning something from their parents, doing chores around the house, looking after the family pet, or cleaning up their pigpens that double as bedrooms. In the latter case mom just sprays some deodorant around and leaves the room smiling.

One problem with all of this is that far too many parents have accepted these fantasies as realities. What we get for it is a never-ending parade of screaming, out-of-control brats infesting restaurants, shopping malls, theatres, parks campgrounds all to the oblivious smiles of mom and dad much to our dismay. I assume they have rights allowing them to destroy the serenity of others.

Since many commercials reflect the leading edge of thinking, and I use the term loosely,  in the entertainment industry, it was only natural that related sitcoms would follow, not to mention the movies.

So, today you can pick and choose from a lengthy menu of movie and television fools, idiots, morons, failures and simpletons to entertain you, give you advice and tell you what’s cool and what’s not. I suspect intelligence isn’t cool with the crowd unless you’re Bill Gates.

But there is another side to all of this and it’s called reality. If you just take a quick peek around you will see how reality has been distorted. Common sense and insight have been shunted aside in favor of gullibility and credulity.

It’s chilling really. And that’s why I think the world today is so easily fooled by charlatans and posers who have no solutions to real problems. Is this why we are being spoon-fed copious amounts of pap about Britney Spears, Hannah Montana and Barak Obama? They keep our minds off real life.

For instance, the Global Warming fable that has become the flavor of the year for so many. In spite of evidence to the contrary that the world over the past five or so years has been cooling, so many scientists, preachers, politicians, journalists and academics have seized on the fantasy so religiously they cannot stop bowing down to the discredited green idol.

In our gullibility we are allowing our governments to tax our economies into ruin in the name of saving the Earth; create repressive laws and institutions designed to wring complicity from its citizens, all in an effort to appease and ultimately capitulate to the eco-anarchists who are striving to create chaos and fear and dictatorship.

And it’s not only Global Warming about which we have been duped. Consider the housing meltdown in the U.S. The bankers who engineered that catastrophe are supposed to be captains of the economic ship. How did it reach the point it has. Some ship. Some captains.

And what about the oil prices that are dragging us toward an economic abyss? We are constantly told it is the market. What market? Driving the oil prices is a system created by for commodity gamblers. Prices are not based on demand, cost of production or levels of supply. They’re based on Ouija Board economics.

The media likes to call these gamblers,  speculators. We should be calling them criminals. Better yet we should be calling them inmates along those who enable their greed.

I could go on but won’t. You can develop your own list of stupid ideas, practices and leaders to suit your own locale. The idea is to expose them. Challenge their stupidity. Pry them from their hiding places and wrench their mantles of greenness, piety and purity from them. They hate it when that happens.

If we continue to follow stupid people with stupid ideas and stupid policies we will indeed find life harder.

Where is John Wayne when we need him?

Bill McIntyre

Well, if it were Poland, I´d agree, but I somehow doubt that laws are passed by people who do not know anything about the subject. You must realise how many specialistic examinations and research it takes to give an expertise about a matter...I somehow doubt you conducted scientific experiments on your farm comparing stress levels at animals having their throats brutally slashed and ones that were unconscious while being slaughtered.

What do you mean about the language? Sounds interesting, could you elaborate? I assume you don´t mean the language taught at home but the choice of language in state schools?

I am French and English by birth I live in a province that forbids me to send my children to English schools because I went to French schools in other provinces.  My English was aquired in those French schools because they educated us in a maner that would give us an advantege over the one that only spoke English or French.  So now I can only give a second rate education to my children because the provincial government is so paranoid of lousing their French identety that they force us to send our children to French schools with a less than mediocer English program.  And you say it is inteligent people that make laws.

What if you moved to a different province? Or does the continuity of learning French goes for the whole Canada? I wasn´t aware you cannot choose your child´s first language in a country with 2 official languages. See, it´s again, putting the national heritage interest over personal benefit of citizens. I thought Canada was better than that.

don´t worry Canada is better than this

most provinces are english speaking except one province which wishes to have and keep it´s french heritage which is Quebec. They have a nationalistic approach to goverment and all. They are given more funding than most provinces and they the province have chosen  to keep french as the main language and english as secondary whereas all other provinces are the reverse. There are private english schools and some public schools that do have english taught as primary language it is just a matter of registar and getting your child to these schools.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/lbpsb/

in other provinces  the students are given some french in public schools but not enough for to converse properly unless you chose to send your child to the few bi lingual schools that  teach most subjects in french instead of english.  All in all Canada is very  multicultural and allows for private schools to be in many language or selected religions  although if you choose this route you must pay directly to the school to send your children as the goverment only funds public schools.

It is unfortunate, but too often those who are responsible for legislation come from those industries making profit from the things they are regulating. IOW it´s a case of the fox watching the chicken coop

If both parents of the child went to a french school they cannot send their child to an english school and the funding for the schools are of provicial jurisdiction not federal and there is a law called law 101 where even the store front signs have to be all in french or else face a fine.

Canada´s official language is English but French is recogninsed under our constitution.  There is only 1 province that is truelly and lawfully bilingual and that is New Brunswick,Quebec is French.

Having said that, when people say that law makers have our best interest at heart I laught, the only best interest they have at heart is what will that law benefit them in the end.