Remiel

Yours foremost.

While I am a believer in the use of affirmative action, I think it desperately needs to be divorced from the use of quotas. I do not think that affirmative action should override truly exceptional qualifications, but is of more use in areas where who is more qualified is ambiguous. Qualifications are somewhat like statistics, I think: they are subject to someting like standard deviation.

The way Bonam stated it made it sound like simple entrance could be denied to people wearing hijab (not veil), turban, sari, whatever the traditional garb of orthodox jews is, and so on... But I am unsure of the validity of your example, because it is my impression that no woman who was devout/fundamentalist enough to wear the veil would be seeking such employment.

I have to disagree with this. Why should the law enable people who are racist to work the system over by banning clothing rather than people?

If the rules in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan permit that there are circumstances in which a women may be forced to remove her veil, that is good enough justification for me to say that they should be obliged to remove it when considered necessary over here. Complete bans of clothing, however, still seem to be a bad idea.

Good job at confusing the political will of yesteryear with that of today.

What benefits would those be? A fair trial, followed by the possibility of more rotting away? How exactly is that a high burden on us?

I think, arguably, in a case such as this the title was conferred by the Queen acting in her role as the Queen of the United Kingdom, not the Queen of Canada. There are, after all, no noble titles for the Queen of Canada to award.

If any opposition party thought that it was an acceptable trade to just let the ruling party destroy the country so that they could gain power later, I would say they they too had an Evil Hidden Agenda.

Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. I have, however, seen 2 Tb external hard drives.

I think the premise that Statistics Canada need only consider the opinion of the federal government is flawed, vis-a-vis public service. Are they not the department that effectively services all governments in Canada? In fact, the federal government makes up only a fraction of their government " customers " . It only makes sense that they be concerned with how good a job they are doing for the whole country, and not just the part of the country that signs their paychecks. Do we really want provinces to feel it necessary to duplicate expenditures by starting their own census divisions to cover up for the federal census' shortcomings?

Perhaps you are right about the usefullness of the article, but how is it intellectual rigorous of you do disregard the results completely just because you do not know how they were obtained? From our perspective, they should have as good a chance of being true as false. Especially since most arguments about affirmative action are littered with heresay...

Because he explicitly renounced it? Does that not mean that he is no longer in possession of Canadian citizenship?

You know, I would not put much store in how many people on CBC want to change it. In my experience, despite the fact that the Toronto Star is left of the Globe & Mail, the people that post in its comments are far right of the people who post on the Glove & Mail. It is like a bizarre version of opposites attract.

How could I? The circumstances are entirely different. Conrad Black was not a 15-year old boy whose choice was made by his father. I do not feel the same about sniffing flowers and sniffing gasoline either.

Either way. Nation is merely tribe on a larger scale.

The most implacable enemies in Afghanistan are nationalists first, not terrorists. If the only people fighting in Afghanistan were primarily terrorists, we would have won ages ago. In any case, Al-Qaeda would find a way to put a spin on it that suited their goals regardless of the actual results. Their ideology already contains the premise that the West is weak. At worst, a sign of weakness would only be confirmation of what they already believed and were acting on. Thus, the " spurring " would be rather limited.

I am sure that sort of argument was made in Vietnam too, yet we all know how that turned out in the end. There are always other factors in play. Also, a person on their side would have to be really, really dumb to mistake victory with easy victory. Victories in which you win because the other side lost interest and gave up are never easy. They are slogs of the worst kind. I will bet you that a lot of the rank and file will be breathing a sigh of relief that they can finally take a break from getting shot at, shelled, bombed, et cetera. Also, in terms of weakness, who exactly are we showing weakness to that has not been trying to attack us over here the entire time? The Russians? They probably think our staying as long as we have when they already failed is the sign of weakness.

Video games play me, :\ . This summer I have been played by... Fallout 3, Supreme Commander, Medieval 2: Total War & Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms, Metroid Prime: Corruption 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports & Wii Sports Resort, Just Dance, Disgaea DS, Pokemon Soul Silver, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Tiger Woods Golf 10, ... and probably a few others that do not come to mind at the moment. I am not much interested in trying to figure out what my " favourites " are. But I imagine StarCraft II will be one one of them... Just five more days...

You are mistaken. It is Black's criminality that we should be unconcerned with. We do not divest criminals of their natural citizenship in ordinary cases, and equally so it should be of little or no bearing on when we decide to restore it to them. It will take an extraordinary measure to convince me that Black truly desires that which he carelessly threw away. It is the strength of Black's desire to be Canadian that we must evaluate, not his legal misdoings.

I do not remember what band it was said of before, but I do recall an anecdote of some band, famous, that hung up there hats after their drummer died. They too said that he had been the heart of the band, and that they could not do it without him. While it varies from band to band, I have been to at least one show where the drummer's hands and arms were flying not stop. I imagine it is probably the most exhausting of all instruments for those who truly go at it.

Maybe the example is not great, but your refutation needs work too, I just realized. The entire premise of " statutory rape " is that the minor cannot consent. And I believe this inability to consent is distinct from the kind that prevents them from entering into contracts. After all, a parent can enter into a contract on a childs behalf, but they cannot consent to sex on a childs behalf, unless I am mistaken.

I cannot say definitively, of course. That is why I wanted more information. But it is not necessarily the case that an Arab lying about being a Jew in order to get laid is necessarily any more sinister than a cab driver lying about being an air pilot to get laid. Is sex counted as a contract now? That seems completely off to me. If a minor kills an adult though, it is not like they can get off based on being unable to join the " social contract " . It would be silly to let someone get away based on a technicality designed for a completely different situation.

If he renounces and discards his peerage, then I would be willing to welcome him back into the fold, forgiven.

I do not suppose we could forget the usual Israel/Palestinian crap and turn this into a discussion about " rape by deception " in general? I was just thinking about this, and I think it is a legitimate charge, but it should be kept highly situational. I am not sure that the case in the article should qualify, because it does not really contain complete information about the motive. The sudden thought that had occurred to me, which is why I decided to post in this topic, is the classic case of statutory rape between a consenting minor and a deceived adult. If there are grounds to believe that an adult who had sex with a minor under the mislead impression that they were an adult would never knowingly consent to sex with a minor, should that not mean, by the same token, that the minor should be charged with this same " rape by deception " ?