Charles Anthony

I am willing to bet that we are hearing from a troll THAT NEVER STEPPED FOOT in the Western World, let alone Canada. The moderator of the forum can track IP addresses (although, that is not always reliable when it comes to tracing origin). I would be very curious to know... The complete cluelessness is mind-bogglingly bizarre and it perplexes me.... I have come across thousands and thousands of foreigners (trust me, both of my parents are bizarre enough) in Canada and none have been so provocatively disdainful AND completely clueless at the same time. Even among the ones who have lived here for decades without learning French or English are not this clueless. I am starting to wonder if some far-off country on the other end of the globe has finally got internet access.... I am starting to imagine somebody hiding out in a cave with their diall up connection trolling a discussion group pretending to be somebody else: "Those stupid Canadistans! They will never catch me! Hah hah hah!"

"Yes, it makes you wonder initially why gays made this an issue especially when they already knew the doors of marriage were open to all anyways and that they only had to abide by the rules like EVERYONE ELSE." Was it really the gay community that made the issue? CAVEAT: I am not asking this question rhetorically or to be a smart-ass. I am seriously wondering. Politicians are either in it for the money or for the enjoyment of power. Nothing else motivates them. Maybe an old fat politician (who was already succesful at sculpting the entire federal system to both become a millionaire and not have to pay any taxes) was looking at the end of his shameful and worthless career in public office and said: "Hmmm... everybody else has left a proud legacy.... what can I do?" and this was the best he could do while the clock was ticking.

I think I have figured it out.... What do you get when you take a cross between K-Pax, Data's twin brother Lore and a Microsoft operating system? .

"why do always anglosaxon countries complain about lack of slaves?" I am profoundly curious about the ulterior motives of this thread.... The use of the word "slaves" is without question inflammatory and provocative. The underlying clueless nature of the premises are worse than my own arrogant musings and ignorant statements. This own smells very funny....

"Powers of the Parliament Section 91. .... 26. Marriage and Divorce. " I get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside knowing that no matter where we are in this vast country of ours, nobody can escape the long ubiquitous tentacles of Ottawa (and the taxes we pay to fund them) protecting and serving me and my fellow Canadians in the business of our bedrooms. I can maintain my illusion that the career politicians actually care.

I live in a three-person household and all three of us could not give a damn about same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, all three of us pay taxes to fund FEDERAL parliamentarians playing in the sandbox over an issue which is ultimately a PROVINCIAL jurisdiction. Something wrong with that picture? Anybody?

"Marriage is such an important arrangement that you should have to explicitly choose this legal arrangement, that is why I am very much against defaulting couples who live together into common-law marriage." Bingo! You hit the nail on the head! That is exactly what we have now and it flies directly in the face of marriage. Thus, in all practicality, we DO NOT have a legal definition of marriage anyway regardless of what side of the fence you prefer to sit. Again, we have an illogical law or a legal system for people who want it both ways. If you shack up long enough (or long enough to convince a judge or long enough for "society" to decide on your behalf without your consent) and then break up, either party can sue the other for effectively what becomes analogous to alimony. Whether you agreed to this contract or not does not matter. The agreement is inferred on your behalf without consent. CAVEAT: I am not arguing whether this is right or worng, but rather I am pointing out an illogical set of concurrent laws. The people who say Marriage Is Sacred must deal with shackers sharing their same sacred legal status. (If you want it to be sacred, keep it in church and do not ask the government to grant you holiness.) The people who just want the tax-benefits must justify their special status to tax-payers who are single and do not feel that they are owed a free-lunch. (Yeah, saying that marriage/common-law/couples/shack-ups leads to children therefore we need to protect children is a magnanimously convincing excuse. It is only when ugly parents pit children against eachother in a messy divorce AND MONEY IS INVOLVED that we all get soooo concerned about the children.) The people who just want protection from a possible break-up DO NOT need a legal marriage status. They can get it from a lawyer. It would be cheaper and the same. The government would only need to spend tax-payers dollars if: - the two sides of the contract break up and - the two sides of the contract can not come to an agreement themselves and - the two sides of the contract EACH think they are better off going through the court system Kind of like what we have now, is it not???? except that we do not have to start off with government bureaucracy (ooohh, the public service jobs that would be lost!) and we do not have to continuously lobby our politicians on our behalf to change the laws (ooooh, the lawyers and members of parliament who would be out of work!!) As suggested, we could have "a default legal arrangment" in the same way as we have wills and last testaments. Now, those who insist on having the tax-payer pay the bureaucrats of the provincial government to rubber stamp their pliable legal status, what exactly do YOU want?

One thing that I wished (although, it does not surprise me that it never happened, Canadians usually want to have their cake and eat it too) was that the gay-marriage controversies went the other way: Simply abolish the legality of ANY marriage. Abolish any legal benefits attributed to marital status. The government does not discriminate based on our favorite color so it should not discriminate based on our "marital" desires. Marriage should not be a legal issue. The state should not be registering us by our marital status. We should not be treated differently based on our marital status. Benefits to anybody should not be determined by our marital status or any other status. Whatever happened to the concept of treating people equally? Whatever happened to the state getting out of the bedrooms of the nation? If people want to get married, go to a church. If people do not want to go to a church, go to hell but do not expect the taxpayer to subsidize the legality of your "marital" status.

If these averted terrorist plots are not a justification for beefing up the Canadian military, I do not know what is! CAVEAT: Where the hell do buy "3 Tons of Ammonium Nitrate" anyway??? Who ever sold it to them should be accountable too.

trea-ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (TREE-tee) n. pl. trea-ties A document or contract which can unilaterally be torn up or ignored or re-written at the convenience of the people who write the history books or by "society" or by whoever has the divine power to "grant rights" or take "rights away". A properly documented treaty can be strategically discredited by pulling out the race card.

"Insisting on race based rights" They are not based on race. They are based on TREATIES signed and invented by Canadian "society".

Hmmm... I will try to be a little less subtle..... I want to understand the condemnation of people who do not vote.... After the non-voters "do their homework, suck it up, hold their noses, and vote for the least objectionable candidate" have they bought the right to "moan about the result"? You call them non-voters. I call them people-whose-views-are-not-represented-by-the-pre-selected-candidates or people-who-will-not-sell-out-to-the-phoney-politicians. There other moral reasons not to vote but that would go off topic. Keep in mind, that non-voters have won the majority of the past few federal elections in both Canada and the U.S.A. Our democracies are SEVERELY deficient.

"we did a unit on Native studies which consisted of a basic rundown on how the Native People provided settlers with the means to survive in this climate, followed by a mock-native banquet with some sad appoximations to corn soup and pemmican. ( nibblets and beef jerky )" I remember the same superficial lessons and representative meal in elementary school. Our education of native history was not more eleborate than that. Mind you, I remember our entire Canadian history lessons being very superficial -- not just dealing with Native affairs. I do not believe that the history of New France and New England are filled with events that instill much pride. There is a lot more ugliness than we would ever know. If elementary history lessons told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it would be very difficult to see young people say they were proud to be Canadian. Mind you, I believe most countries (except for maybe Tibet) deal with the same issue of filtering out ugly aspects of their history. "In this thread id like to discuss the problem of education. How knowing all the correct historical facts beforehand might have reduced friction and promoted some understanding of WHY the people are present at the Reclaimation Site in Caledonia - and others sites Natione wide. What did you know of the situation before all the media attention?" I think it is impossible to get Canadians to ever understand "all the correct historical facts" over Native history. I do not believe Canadians care. Also, you would really have to throw out all of the history books. I never knew anything about Caledonia until the Natives put up the recent blockade. Natives throughout the country should do the same sort of thing to defend their rights and their land. I think Canadians will have to learn the hard way. Never give up fighting because I believe it is the most efficient education campaign for Canadians.

"paralizing the globe and brought the air-line industry to a stand still after 9-11." Just the airline industry? "twin towers symbol of capitalism's success" What about the third tower, Tower 7, that mysterious crumbled that afternoon but was not hit by a plane? Take a look at the footage: http://www.wtc7.net/ Intriguingly, the evidence of debris was rapidly destroyed.

The "war an terror" is a make-work program for the American military industry and to support commercial interests. Period. All of the other details are smoke and mirrors to keep us confused. The military is just a special form of bureaucracy, plain and simple. All of the ugliness is the price the current American administration and military elite are willing to pay (or more accurately, make their electorate pay and other people suffer) to keep their jobs and support their commercial interests domestically and abroad. People make the "war on terror" more complicated than it actually should be. They are being fooled by the smoke and mirrors. In Canada, we have smoke and mirrors to obfuscate our own make-work programs too. The big difference is that our make-work programs are not as violent. We tear up perfectly fine roads to repave them again before tearing them up again so that we can finally repave them. We have bureaucrats who do nothing. We have national, provincial and municipal advertizing campaigns to "educate us" about the current pie-in-the-sky issue of the day. Imagine all of the public servants in Canada being vastly military. We would declare war against a nebulously vague chimeric enemy too. Canadian governments are generally led by people whose election campaigns were funded by drug companies or teachers' unions or some other generally non-belligerent special interest groups. Compared to the U.S.A., our politicians are not surrounded by family and friends with proud military experience and heritage and interests. "I think the central point is why does a war on terror need to be declared (causing some of the problems addressed in the article) as opposed to a war on explicitely identified terrorists?" Correct. The convenience of not explicitly identify an enemy is that it gives you smoke and mirrors behind which the state can hide (or fool the population about) its actions. People who are opposed to the "war on terror" should draw some consolation in the fact that it is sending the U.S.A. into bankrupcy. Once they no longer are able to finance their "military industry", this "war on terror" will end. Unfortunately, the "war on terror" will likely be replaced by something else. An unemployed military will soon become restless.

I enjoyed both poems. The clever use of rhyming patterns and meter is hard to find these days. As pieces of language art, they are both refreshing. You two receive high accolades from me. Long ago, I tried to follow a local coffee-house reading series. I struggled through the presentation of incredibly tiresome modern poetry. So many times the snarky jerk in me wanted to interrupt and say: "duh... your poems do not rhyme... why not??" just to be stupid but I always bit my tongue and tolerated the sloppy verse. CAVEAT: As far as the subject matter is concerned, my faith is not logical. There is no point presenting or defending my view on euthanasia.

"You're missing (or ignoring) the biggest piece of the puzzle as regards protecting children from second hand smoke in private homes: they're private homes." Correct. I am exposing the hypocrisy of this law. Either second hand smoke IS HARMFUL and smoking in front of children at home is abuse, or second hand smoke IS NOT HARMFUL and we do not outlaw it at home with children. Our new law wants us to have it both ways. This new law makes no sense regardless of which side of the fence you sit. Whether you support smoking in public or not and whether you believe second-hand smoke is dangerous or not, this law is illogical. "The real issue here is whether second hand smoke is actually dangerous." Correct. However, our "society" has removed that option from us. Our democratically elected Ontario provincial government has decreed that it is dangerous. Therefore, arguing whether it is dangerous or not is now moot in Ontario. Onward: Now that "society" has forced us to assume that second hand smoke is dangerous, it is odd that we are completely unconcerned about the welfare of our children and more concerned about changing the behavior of consenting adults. That is my point. I am pointing out the hypocrisy and the contradictions with this law. I do not trust the motives of our law-makers. This law makes too little sense. Why would we force a behavior change between consenting adults but not consider child abuse? PLEASE UNDERSTAND this question assumes second-hand smoke is dangerous because our government says so.

"who are the legal beagles that write the laws?" Our politicians: the people to whom we sell our votes.

This thread is mixing two issues: 1) the responsibilities (I would say, misrepresentation of its members) of a labor union 2) the nitty gritty details of Israeli and Palestinian relations I would like to propose my own boycott: Until the two issues are separated into two different lines, I am staying out of this tangled thread!

"People who concent by inaction, still give their concent." What is the definition of slavery?

Under a libertarian or anarchist community, this guy and these judges would suffer the wrath of the mob -- as they should. You guys deal with your "rights granted by society" and this disgusting aftermath!

This is always an interesting complaint: "Worse, let's not forget all those who don't vote at all and yet moan about the result." What do you suggest to people who do not approve of either candidates? What should they do on election day?

"You consented to this contract by choosing to live in the territory owned by the strata corporation. " Much like a born-slave chooses slavery.

"One responds to the challenge of improving our lives by turning a little bit to the left...the other by turning a bit to the right -- with no REAL change in the end." From a game theory perspective, it is not surprising. The two competitors are vying for the same audience. Gradually, they end up offering the same AVERAGE product. As soon as one major competitor offers a slightly different product, he takes the risk of losing consumers. Thus, in the long run, it is safer for the two to effectively offer the same platform. What would you do if you were the leader of the provincial Liberals or Conservatives? Would YOU take the risk of offering a different platform? Remember: your first interest is to get (and stay) elected! "Where's the vision???" What exactly is "vision"? I really do not understand that question. People always talk about "vision" in a politician and I do not think that I want or care about having a politician with any sense of "social engineering" or change. I just expect a government to enter office with the intention of governing -- rather than a sense of change or vision or values or anything else. Mind you, what I expect a government to do is very minimalist. I understand some people expect more from their government than I do.

Certainly not the people who funneled tax-payers dollars into their pockets under the pretense of phoney advertizing campaigns in Quebec to encourage Quebeckers to stay in Canada. Those who made money off of AdScam would certainly have suffered if Quebec voted to separate at their last referendum.