Remiel

I have news for you: none of those insitution matter one whit without the people that run them. You do not seem to comprehend that the Crown has no power over the men and women in the courts, the military, the parliament and all Canadian institutions other than what those people allow themselves. If following the " Crown " means trillions of dollars in debt, then that is so much worse for the Crown, because it will not be followed.

And how do you imagine the " Crown " will manage this feat, when there is no one who will enforce the " Crown's " will?

What Order in Council do you imagine can compel Canadians to submit to debt slavery?

What what else would you call interest in excess of 15000%? Just go a few posts back and charter.rights claims we owe an excess of $500 billion dollars on land that may have, at probably the most generous, been worth $3 billion in today dollars at the time of sale.

I am not sure of what significance agreeing on policy is though when one side is lying gratuitously about the policy...

Has the government ever claimed that we need new prisons because of overcrowding in the old ones?

You guys really do First Nations credit by implying that they are usurers of the worst kind.

Perhaps, but since " unexplained " pretty much means " we do not know " , then it seems odd to suggest with any degree of confidence that it is not suspicious, since an explanation of death is a large determining factor in where something really is suspicious or not. See above. But furthmore, what makes a crime suspicious is not limited to the physical location of a crime. A substantial life insure policy, for instance, has absolutely nothing to do with he physical scene of death. Yet it can have everything to do with that death being suspicious. Maybe I was engaging in a little hyperbole. But there is such a thing as being justified in not taking what appears to be a coincidence at face value. If you look through this thread for my clarification on what I mean by " coincidence " , then my justification for believe this is not a coincidence should be readily apparent.

True enough, but that would equally support the notion that we need different immigration, as oppossed to no immigration.

I really doubt that it is "propaganda" that suggests that most Jews did not really want to stick around in Germany after World War II.

That depends on the particulars of the arrangement. Terms can be attached, or if it is really a concern, a lease agreement could be reached instead of a sale; one that included certain conditions. That said, I am not sure what the real effect of privatization would be. Maybe it would become more succesful at carrying the books people want to read. But it is also possible that the general experience could suffer, and that collections would deteriorate.

I suppose, it is not surprising that your particular brand of "intelligence" extends to other matters as well...

Those are good points, but I do not think they really are what we are "talking" about. This thread is about the death of a whistleblower; at issue is not whether Murdoch could have known about the phone hacking beforehand, but rather whether he could have been party to something being done after the fact. Another big assumption that has been made though is that "poweful interests" necessarily means Murdoch. Murdoch is hardly the only person who had something to lose here...

The bias on parade here is yours. While in whatever la la land you crawled out of I am assuming that Murdoch must be guilty, back in the real world my only assumption is that he could be guilty. And if you cannot figure out the difference between those two assumptions, well... I will let everyone else draw their own conclusions.

It may actually be a mistake to assume that the object of growth is to make things better. It is entirely possible that the object is merely to keep them from getting worse. But there is another problem. You seem to be under the assumption that if we stop accepting immigrants we will be okay because our population will not really change that much. But you have completely overlooked the makeup of that population. The important question is not how many people we have, but the ratio of young to old. Take Japan and China for instance. There is a very real danger of those economies turning into giant clusterfucks in the forseeable future because everyone is old.

Yes, just like you are certain that I say it just because Murdoch is conservative, because that feeds into your imagined narritive of me being a particular evil and heinous poster. Pathetic.

Out of curiosity, if your descendants did not have any resemblance to your looks, but did possess something of your smarts, would this less obvious resemblance satisfy your sentiment attachment to your own qualities?

What I mean is this: Say I am a concerned (I am), industrious (I am probably not) citizen, who think government can do better. So I think to myself, " I wonder what is really happening in government. Sure, the government releases a budget, but that only tells us the broadest, most useless strokes. " If I want to find out what is actually happening at the micro level, there is virtually no way that can be done. What open government should do for me is to make that sort of information accessible, so that any citizen with free time and the will can take a look at the books and figure out what is going on, and maybe even come up with ways to improve it. Ultimately, what I am saying is probably not that different from what you are saying, but the way you look at it is like trying to sell politicians vinegar ("We know you are up to no good and we are going to get you!"), whereas I think my way is more likely trying to sell them honey ("We all want the country to work better, and if you openned the books, you could get a lot of free labour!"). That is perhaps a little simplistic on my part, but I am sure you get the idea.

You talk about Open Government as a means to introduce oversight to government, Michael, but I think you are missing or glossing over a more important goal. The better purpose of an open government is, in my opinion, to give citizens and citizen groups the information and tools they need for policy innovation. That is to say that a large part of understanding what should be done with our nations resources is dependant on what is being done with our nations resources. Perhaps this is something of a matter of semantics, but the way you approach this in some ways seems to have as its purpose that government ought to do less wrong, whereas the real victories of open government will always like in people discovering how to do more right.

This a good point, but do these people really exist higher than the deputy minister level though? Who are the people in the public service bureaucracy who decide that when X number of dollars need to be carved off the budget, that Y% will come from one department, while Z% will come from another, rather than just A% from all departments?

If you accept that population growth is good for the economy, and that without immigration, there would be almost no population growth in Canada, then you must, at least tentativly, accept by extension that immigration is good for the economy.

Good to have you back and starting to post a little more often, Rue. I hope it is a trend, .

Many of you will find this very partisan, but: If budget cuts are the order of the day, I would far rather have those doing the cutting not being folks with ideological designs on cutting down the public service. I am less likely to trust them to cut what makes sense rather than what they do not personally care for. In other words, I would posit that people who are more likely to support the public service are likely to be more qualified to cut it down. To use a needlessly complex analogy of questionable value and excessive romanticism: if I have a giant block of ice that I need to make lighter, if I hand the hammer and chisel to a conservative who thinks we do not need the ice on principle, he will merely pick a spot and hammer off a big chunk of ice. What I need instead is someone who does not object to ice blocks as being useless on principle, and thus given job of cutting it down to size would rather make something of the opporunity and carve a sculpture.

What part of " critical judgement " do you not understand? How can I even be expected to comment on Grant and Lee? I am Canadian, and this is a Canadian message board, or had you forgotten? But for what it is worth, both of them have several children before the Civil War. Do you think this detail too is irrelevant? That family may have not affected their judgement and resolve?

Just because I said they may have lied does not mean that it would be unjustified lying. Investigation of crimes (as opposed to criminals) should not be treated like prosecutions. It is not innocent unless proven suspicious. It is suspicious unless proven innocent; at the least when you have an obvious motive and powerful actors involved. Sure, as other have noted, the additional stress surrounding the media frenzy may have taken its toll. Maybe he drank more and did more drugs, and that killed him. Maybe he knew he was toast, and that is why he spilled. But that is not what I mean by coincidental. Coincidence is the absence of causal connection. It would not be reasonable to believe without good evidence that his death had absolutely nothing to do with how events have played out.