Wilber

That is funny. As far as the frat boys go, I don't see how you can blame someone else for what comes out of your mouth.

Maybe you are right about that but the fundamental facts cannot be denied. He was a powerful & outspoken critic of globalism and died mysteriously and unusually. People do die when they speak against the money interest. Except for the fact the Russians shot the aircraft down, I know the speculation and assumptions in that article are wrong. Trust me on that.

This really did happen. I remember it on the news around that time. People don't make this stuff up. The Soviets did in fact shoot down a passenger airliner flying over Russian airspace. Yes they did. What is crap is that articles version of it.

Be carefull about what you believe. The statements in this article about KAL 007 are complete crap. The person who wrote it either didn't now what they were talking about or was deliberately misleading. Prior to the early 90's no western commercial aircraft had access to Soviet airspace. Sakhalin had some of the most sensitive and restricted military areas in eastern Siberia, there is no way overflight would have been allowed unless possibly someone was on fire. In the event of being low on fuel, Chitose on Hokkaido would have been a far better option than any place in Russia. The most north and westerly routing from North America to Asia was an airway called R220 which kept all traffic east of Soviet airspace including the Kurils which are well to the east of Sakhalin. Passing Shemya in the Aleutians aircraft were required to transmit a position report including their position relative to Shemya to confirm that they were not infringing on Soviet airspace. All air traffic control on this route was the responsibility of Anchorage and Tokyo centers. There is no air traffic control radar coverage between Shemya and Japan only position reports given by radio. At no time would there be communication with Russians. The normal routing to Seoul was across Japan and over the Sea of Japan south of Soviet and North Korean airspace. These guys were way off course but that was not unusual for KAL, they had a history of violating Soviet airspace. Several years before they had another aircraft forced to land by fighters because it was over Kamchatka.

What happened? They used to teach this stuff in school. When did they stop? If present day teachers are so ignorant it must have been some time ago. We are fed this BS about being a nation of peace keepers. Peace keeping is a difficult and often dangerous job but it is only part of our history. Well over 100,000 Canadians died during the 20th century defending the freedom of others. Most of them are buried in the countries where they fell and many have no known graves. Do we have a generation of academics and politicians knowingly robbing our children of this heritage to fit their own agenda and rewrite history to suit their own vision? I hope not, that is a game of despots, dictators and repressive regimes everywhere.

So bearing in mind that Clinton agrees with Harpers stance on Afghanistan that would make Clinton a social conservative?

Amazing. Nearly 10% of our population participated in WW1 and nearly 1% of our population died in it yet our schools don't think it worthy of mention. No wonder so many Canadians think we have only ever been a nation of "Peace Keepers". Talk about revisionist history.

How is homosexuals wanting to ban religion different from religions who want to ban homosexuality?

This tells me you learned more US history than Canadian at school, or was it just from watching TV?

I never learned about Arthur Currie. I knew of Billy Bishop because of the play of the same name. I don't think they taught anything about the First World War in our school. By far the most costly war in our history.

Second that.

Pretty Sad Do schools teach Canadian history any more? If so, what do they teach?

How many opposition MP's have visited Kandahar?

In Manitoba, they prosecute. There is no tougher legislation in the country. Cops here don't take the breathalyser. Even if they don't though, they are guilty. The law finds you guilty of you don't submit to the test. And they can lose their jobs because of that. The law is similar here. Trouble is, unlike many Provinces the police do not have the power to press charges in BC, only the prosecuters. The ratio of prosecutions to arrests is very low.

I don't think the solution is attacking and intimidating the judiciary. Setting laws is a federal and provincial responsibility. If they think there is a legal and social need to battle crime, perhaps they should go about trying to finds solutions rather than blame judges. Somehow placing cops on a panel to select judges seems to be the weakest of solutions. If the Conservatives would actually appoint judges and other officials, it would help. So far the number of vacancies in departments keeps rising. The Criminal Code is a Federal responsibility, which I think is what most people are concerned about. I don't know that making the selection process more open is intimidating the judiciary. I don't know what to make of the judiciary. Whenever the selection process is questioned they complain that their independence will be threatened. When criticized for rarely if ever applying sentences that are anywhere the maximum possible under the law, they complain that they must abide by sentencing guidelines. Which is it, are they independent or not? Or do many of them think that handing out sentences much lower than the maximum allowed is exercising their independence. Or do they get together and decide among themselves what an appropriate sentence should be and damn the law. The people working on Carley's law decided to do a nationwide audit on hit and run convictions. The maximum penalty is 5 years. They could not find one case in Canada where anyone had served as much as two, even after causing a death. Lets face it, maximum sentences are a cruel joke on victims. They are led to believe that the justice system takes what happened to them seriously but what they receive bears no resemblance to what they thought they should expect. It's all a mystery to me but I think it is fair to say that public respect for the legal system in general and the judicial system in particular has never been lower in my lifetime.

I have. There is big who ha going on in West Van right now about an officer who is on a driving suspension for impaired was given a promotion just recently. Desk job of course. Turns out the drinking took place at the station after a shift. She did submit to a breathalyser, blew over and plead guilty. The irony is that the Crown prosecutes so few people for impaired in BC that without the media jumping into it, she would probably have got off if she had fought it.

I don't know that closed shops serve justice either. It's an interesting dilemma.

Then should judges be present in the hiring process of police officers? Makes about as much sense as police officers being given a veto on judges being appointed. I thought there was a proposal to have them present in the selection process as to who goes in the pool to be hired, not who is actually hired. No reason why a judge should not have a say when it comes to selecting candidates for police officers but who was talking about anyone having a veto? I wonder how many psychological evaluations lawyers and judges have to go through before they are allowed to work in their professions.

Do you think judges should sit on law enforcement review agencies as well? After all, police think they can judge themselves? Why not put a judge on police commissions? Why, this is about who gets hired, not how they do the job afterward. The police don't sit on the internal review boards concerning the conduct of judges and lawyers. If prosecutors (lawyers) decide that a law has been broken by someone (police , judge or lawyer) they press charges and a judge (another lawyer) decides if it has been broken and determines the penalty. If we are to have outsiders sit on internal review boards, let's be consistent and apply it to everyone in the justice system.

Despicable, despicable, despicable. Gerry, please find another word. How about reprehensible or contemptible? I'm having visions of Daffy Duck.

Which cops would be on that review panel: The RCMP Commissioner? Doesn't he try for maintaining status quo as well? I don't know, how does anyone get picked? Other judges and lawyers get to pick their members on the panel. The government picks the rest, probably on the advice of other judges and lawyers. The police have just as big a stake in how the judical system operates as lawyers and judges but have no input. They have to deal with the system's screw ups. I don't know of any police officers who are happy with the status quo. My son says there is never a shift that they aren't briefed on someone who has just been released into the area who is considered a high risk to re offend. They only noitify the public about those they consider present a severe danger.

The veterans were quite strong in Manitoba. They originally wanted everything to come to a stop and it did. At one time, there was not a restaurant, a retail business or anything else opened on the day of Remembrance. But why only the western provinces?

November 11 is already a provincial holiday in Manitoba. Only from Manitoba west and the Territories for some reason.

Another character of his is Ali G. I think Cohen is brilliant.

I seem to remember that one reason the poppy was chosen to honour those who fell was because it often seemed to be the only living thing in No Mans Land. I think that to use it for anything other than to honour those people on the day that is reserved for that purpose is disrespectfull.