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But not all cultures are good. And the people who are most determined to shut down all discussion of it are the vultures of the immigration industry, the immigration lawyers and 'advisors' who make their living off ever growing numbers of immigrants and have zero concern with either the immigrants they represent or the well-being of Canadians.

Exactly. Apparently we’re suppose to believe that cultures abroad that bring extreme traditions of sexism, homophobia, racism, anti-semitism, etc are traditions we need added to our Canadian culture.

Coulter and Limbaugh are just rallying cries for the Left though. It's an invocation - a bogeyman - and just leads the discussion off on a red herring. They have their platform, and their listeners, and they natter loudly and provocatively at the dumb and the ignorant. Their business is to do exactly what they're doing and they're in no way demonstrative of the "Right" in general, just like Kim Jong is not a good representation of the Left. Both "sides" are guilty of putting their head in the sands, but the "offence-culture" has a far larger and more successful apparatus for naming and shaming on a mainstream level. Unless you're voicing 100% support for whatever progressive issue is in vogue at the moment, it's best to keep your mouth shut. Questioning the implications even are often met with public shaming, campaigns to boycott and then cowardly attempts at conflict avoidance from the wayward speakers peers (current and former) who scramble to distance themselves from what often amounts to little more than a differing viewpoint. JK Rowling hates transgender people, we'd be led to believe. Few actually bothered to pay attention to what she was saying and where her comments come from.

Call it whatever you want, but as of today the police are tasked with mopping up most of society's ills. Cops don't make people commit crimes....crimes defined by elected legislative process. Too easy to just blame the cops.

That's the problem. It aims to be much more than just an organized diplomacy system. Diplomacy, at its core, is negotiating, but in most cases the UN isn't even really negotiating anything. The long-winded "negotiations" leading up to a UN resolution are sublime examples of cynicism, hypocrisy and moral relativism. The "resolutions", at best, usually amount to nothing more than finger-pointing and empty promises - all in exchange for a lot of time and diplomatic energy. Since the majority of the member nations aren't even free democracies (I just looked it up), the needs of the organization are therefore tilted towards the needs of dictatorships that share few of our values and don't even express the will of their own people. These regimes enhance their appearance of legitimacy on the global stage by supporting resolutions against their enemies (Israel for example) or work to compromise ones that are problematic for them, all the while paying lip-service to ideals that they regularly piss on. That's not to say we should abolish the UN. As a diplomatic forum, it's worthwhile just to have a place where everyone can talk, make their concerns heard and even cooperate to negotiate inter-nation treaties. By that I mean we actually have tit-for-tat negotiating, realizing the obvious imbalances of power and not pretending they don't exist (the whole security council veto mechanism makes this implicit, but why bother?). There are obviously other benefits to the UN and its myriad of organizations, but even with examples like the WHO we can see how badly compromised they can be just on account of the transparency of its members (hey China).

Tasers can be lethal....how quickly they forget that Robert Dziekanski was killed by RCMP taser at the Vancouver airport in 2007.

This forum was invaded by people who lost their platform when news-outlets started limiting and closing comments sections. A lot of lefties abandoned the place when it was over-run by right-wing refugees who immigrated here but of course righties will say the opposite is true. An ability, inability or unwillingness to communicate is definitely at the heart of things and it's clearly not just this forum that this trend is apparent. I would argue the right was enjoying a lot more success at being offensive when Karl Rove, conservative PAC's and allied media punditry - the Limbaugh's and Coulter's of the airwaves - took a very in-your-face no-holds barred stance towards pushing a conservative agenda. The ridiculous result being that the right-wing is now a direction and everything in its wake is communist. Maybe that's what running away does to a person.

Personally I think the UN needs a profound re-imagining. Owing to its makeup, it's a fundamentally unprincipled organization and its hypocrisy and cynicism is shameless. At this point it looks more to me like a tool to leverage the guilt of developed/western nations and promote the interests dictatorships and third-world holes. When the West finally wakes up and sees the UN for what it is instead of what they wish it was, it will be a lot more useful. Nearly half the membership is comprised of dictatorships or sham democracies, so it's naive to believe that the UN functions as some sort of unifying body. It's a global diplomatic forum.

Since I missed a chance to discuss the Trump rally in the, now locked, thread. I'll contribute here. Unmitigated disaster. Trump walking sullenly from AF1 that night almost made you feel a bit sorry for him. His team totally effed him. The excuse given is that protestors stopped people from coming. How many protestors? Because this is certainly a roadmap for derailing any further Trump Rallies. A million people asked to be there? Even if, say 100,000 people showed up, X-amount of protestors only allowed for a paltry 6,000 people to come into the building. Trump had already threatened protestors that if they were violence there'd be consequences. And Tulsa police only reported 1 arrest. It seems MAGA heads are quite conflict adverse. And this is one of the reddest states there is. You'd think protesting in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania etc etc etc would be much worse. The more likely scenario is that only 6,000 people did show up because it's a Global Pandemic! and even MAGA-heads have more sense that to pack into a crowded arena. But the more hilarious result of this is that Trump's team thought that it was a sell-out. So much so that they erected a useless overflow stage! Why is that? Thanks Tik-Tok!!! https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-tiktok-users-say-they-helped-sabotage-trump-rally-with-false/ They'll have to revisit their registration system going forward.

It's a test: if you saw that rally as anything better than the shitshow it was, you are definitely IN the cult. Seriously, he spent 15 minutes talking about how he can walk down a ramp, then drank a glass of water to show how strong he is... BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT - he can run and drink water !!!

Bonnie Henry is probably the most respected health official on the planet. She is probably the most successful health official on the planet too. I'm bloody thankful I live in a place with a largely intelligent population that apparently knows how to take serious people seriously. I suspect contact tracing will be popular enough in BC it will easily pass becoming mandatory especially for visitors and of course people returning from jurisdictions where people prefer morons over experts.

They can qualify in Canada as federal skilled trade workers.

...you know...from a comfy armchair mit der snifter of brandy.

It's always easy to say how YOU could have ended the Battle of Stalingrad six months earlier than the generals did.

I watched it a few days ago, but I didn't see him turn. Well, he turned his head, but his feet kept on running. He turned to look behind him as he ran away, if I recall. Then pointed the taser behind him and fired, but he wasn't looking at the target when he fired the taser gun, and the shot went way off. The whole even is both stupid and unfortunate, but you have to put the onus on the police for what happens. They already presumed control over the civilian when they stopped him, did the test on him. He was in their detention at that point if you will, although not yet arrested. It's easy to pass judgement from here and hindsight has 2020 vision, yes I know. But I am not a cop. I don't have their training, I don't know what they're supposed to do in cases like this. It just seems to me, as a professional in a different industry, I take authority over situations I am responsible for, as an expert. As a police officer I would think handling a dumb, unpredictable goon in a parking lot with two officers on site would be one of the first items on my training to-do list. I have no opinion whether they should go to jail or not. Plenty of things can be changed, training, blah blah blah but the essential recipe for social violence is still there.