Remiel

Because that is what an alliance is: a mutual concern organization. What is going on in Ukraine is of vast importance to NATO countries that border on Ukraine. Therefore it is of concern to all of them. Not to mention Ukraine was a possible candidate for inclusion of the alliance. That mere fact is enough to create concern, even if there is no resulting obligation.

On the contrary: Ukraine concerns everyone in NATO.

Financial "terrorism" ? Seriously?

Does it matter whether it is banks behind the attacks on crypto-currencies? The currencies are vulnerable in exactly the same way no matter who it is doing the "damage" .

To be fair written histories can also be edited and extremely self-serving. That said, on the whole they preserve detail much better and this makes them more accurate. The primary problem with oral history, to my mind, is actually gate-keeping. One should not have to depend on friendly relations with a highly specialized oral history buff to have access to the complete version of such histories. Anyone can obtain a book without regard to their prior opinion of the author or the positions taken therein.

See, as far as I am concerned there is something fundamentally wrong with that statement. Not something that I am saying is your fault: it is a common rejoinder I think. But here is the thing: We do not say that there is a presumption of not guilty until proven guilty. We say there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. There are so many things that are complained about as injustices that are completely trivial compared to the fact that your entire life many be ruined by the government without any recourse because preliminary evidence pointed to you as a strong suspect in a crime. What you are effectively doing is making the prosecution a pseudo-judicial/juridical actor where being charged with a crime is of near-equal practical relevance as being convicted of one. Having a post-facto verdict of innocence, where after a finding of not-guilty a different judge reviews the evidence and can "upgrade the verdict" could perhaps be an equitable way to go.

Smokers hang around just outside the entrances of buildings all the time. Enforcement appears to be horrible. I am convinced my mother's health has been negatively affected by the people who do that at the building where she works. And this is a building used by a government, where officers of the law are present all the time. And it still happens.

I always find it odd that people are so keen to debate on whether the current "compensation" to the guilty for what they served before being convicted but no one ever talks about just compensation for the people who are not guilty. I do not mention this from the conservative position of, "Let the guilty rot," but rather as a criticism of that vigour not being applied in an orderly way to everyone else. Now, it may the case that sometimes you can sue. But why should you need to? That sort of thing should have a codified baseline.

You forgot the other health care argument: poisoning other people for your own pleasure. And before you say anything, no, car exhaust is not an analogy. Our entire civilization will not grind to a halt if people stopped smoking.

I have to disagree. Now, it may in fact be the case that the populations of India and China and under-reported. But that has little to nothing to do with the total population size and everything to do with how organized their sub-divisions (India) and the willingness of people to be on the government's radar (China). I could literally just as easily say that we cannot know the combined population of North America and Europe because it is over (or at least close to) a billion people. And I would be wrong for the exact reasons I stated.

The re-evaluation of the appropriate level of irrigation is the right thing here. All you need to know about California agriculture is the mere idea that we could pipe them water all the way from Canada so that they can keep agriculture completely unsuited for their own environment going.

Where is this history written down in detail. I have never heard of any definitive primer on indigenous history by indigenous people.

Where the heck are you getting these numbers? Those are like double the actual populations of China and India (1.36 billion in China and 1.24 billion in India).

I understand why you think that this state of affairs is wrong. But I am telling you it is the lesser evil. If we do not accept that people become citizens by being born here than we are opening ourselves up to a world of headaches vis-a-vis indigenous peoples, many of whom would be (and already are) too happy to argue that we do not belong here just because we were born here and live here. That is a can of worms that should just not be opened.

I sure as Hell will not be saying nice things about anyone in the Conservatives I would not say nice things about now. In any case, Cotler is a big loss for the Liberal caucus, but ,yes, one likely made inevitable by age. A loss for all of Parliament and Canada. I do not think there is anyone else in the Commons that has as great a stature.

I am inclined to think that it is because at some level we are influenced to reserve the harshest criticism for those who are most likely to listen. The US and Israel may be criticized so much because we believe they can be swayed by our words. Russia and the Arab dictators not so much.

The PQ. See Argus' post.

Anyone who is a member of an indigenous nation (not band, or tribe, but one of the ~60 nations) that straddles the Canada/US border should get an exemption from the language rule. This would be an extreme corner case, as I cannot imagine very many people who fit that definitely do not speak English or French fluently, but it would be both just and I think would be a low cost way to nab a brownie point or two.

One thing that is probably worth pointing out: King George III wanted to be an absolute monarch but he was a constitutional one, particularly at the time the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was made; the Whigs were in control of Parliament. This fact, that the Royal Proclamation was written by constitutionalists, confounds some of the assumptions of both sides in the indigenous vs. non-indigenous debate I think.

First Nations contend that blood quantum is a racist concept imposed on them. I think their view is more cultural. As has been pointed one does not have to be ethnically English to be part of the "English" nation, one does not have to have a certain number of Iroquois ancestors to be part of one of the Six Nations. This is a reasonable contention, but there is still a lot of disentangling to do between that and assimilation. I get the feeling that this is one of the places where a native superiority complex bubbles out: if a person has any claim to being part of an indigenous nation then that is where they "belong" and if they do not participate then Canada has "assimilated" them (and assimilation is supposed to be bad). There does not seem to be a lot of credence given to the notion that some of these people with mixed national backgrounds just ought to belong to the Canadian nation first and foremost.

Here is the problem: If you want to eliminate native "birthright" you are going to have to make a really convincing case for why we are not eliminating all non-native "birthrights" at the same time. An impossibly convincing case, really.

Innoculation my butt. There is no way anyone could be so dense as to think that kicking out the Senators is going to make anyone forget that they were Liberals when they played loose with the expenses, if that is indeed what happened.

"No one seemed to complain when we hung the leadership of the Nazis." Exactly. "Leadership" . How many of the Hitler Youth were left swinging from the rafters?

In case anyone saw the incorrect version, I originally attributed #3 to Manny Jules, but after a minute that rang false to me, he is the guy involved with the privatization of land. Who I meant, and who it has been since edited to say, is Howie Miller the comedian and father of that one guy who played in Twilight. I remembered him by his description and that the name ended with an "ee" sound but got the specifics wrong. My apologies.

That is going too far. That sort of generalization does not even make mathematical sense: those kind of native sympathizers are just not numerous enough to say that natives have more racists among two to four million than Canada has in thirty one to thirty three million. There are only two or three situations that come to my mind to even back of the assertion that anyone thinks that way, let alone everyone. 1) Documents from the Six Nations of the Grand River claiming Canada could own they trillions of dollars from a few tiny pieces of land; 2) a couple of protesters at an event out West (I think it was a Liberal leadership event?) that claimed natives should straight up get 30% of Canada's GDP; and 3) Howie Miller proclaiming "My people should be Kings," in the CBC documentary 8th Fire, a terrible and possibly fatal blemish on what was generally a great series. And in his case it may have been more just running his mouth off without thinking. To assert from that every native thinks that way is incredibly racist. I will admit that I do think there are heavy undertones of aristocratic thought in this whole situation, but the evidence for feudalism is sparse.