JB Globe

But in the examples you cited none of the people involved were charged with a crime. The employers decided that these people violated company rules and behaved in a way that had a negative effect on the company, thus they were fired. Free speech doesn't apply to the workplace - you can't fire off racial slurs in the board room and cite the Charter or constitution as a defence.

Well, they do, when you apply more modern methods of analysis vs. 19th century ones. And frankly, even though it stands at 70% reduction and not 100%, I find the "Rebound Method" illustrates that yes, energy conservation can work. I also fail to see how, when you add up all the INDIRECT uses of energy a household uses, for example, and look at conservation efforts there, how you can say it doesn't work? - ie: buying local food vs. food trucked in from California and/or shipped from other continents. I mean, there's enough unused greenspace in most cities to produce a good chunk of our total food consumption. How much total arable land in Toronto currently sits unused under hydro towers, for example? Combine that with increased investment in Canadian farms, and you save a ton of energy right there. Unless that cost of energy is flexible - governments increase the tax rate if it becomes too low and decrease it if it becomes too high. I mean, it's possible to do this with interest rats, and the financial system is more complex than the energy system (and as we've seen in the past year or so - not completely rational either). I don't see why we can't figure this one out. Sure it can, you just base the transit infrastructure on density. Highly built-up areas require subways, others like Toronto's "old/inner suburbs" (Etobicoke, Scarborough) can sustain LRT, and others can use Bus RT (which of course, can be electric if needed). Efficient Transit is a great way to intensify development. You get an efficient BRT system, which increases the desirability of a region, which increases density, which means eventually you will be able to justify putting in LRT systems, which will spur more development, etc. - This is essentially what York Region (north of Toronto) is doing with their popular VIVA bus system - which is tied to their master plan of creating thoroughly urban downtowns in cities like Richmond Hill & Markham. Remember, transit doesn't always mean subways. That's more an example of bad planning than transit being bad. We can at least agree that bad planning can mess up any kind of system - no matter how inherently positive that system may be. Let me clarify, I know we will have to build nuclear plants to be part of an energy mix that includes renewable, I would just rather avoid building as many as possible, if for no other reason than their capital costs. I think it would be cheaper to focus on conservation and renewables and fill in the holes with nuclear, rather than the other way around. Thanks for that, there's nothing that makes one's own case stronger than having the other guy cop out and call you stupid. Where did I indicate otherwise? I think you're making gross assumptions. To clarify: yes, I know things aren't ideal and we'll have to use fossil fuels until we reduce and/or hold consumption rates and alternatives are up and running. Unless of course, the province was responding to a popular grassroots campaign, that included support from the mayor, and then proceeded to handily sweep said city in re-election. Most folks who live in suburbs want their communities to be redeveloped, because they see the consequences of sprawl every day when they spend hours in gridlock, and when they hear about dwindling city finances because there's not enough taxes to pay for the infrastructure needed for a sprawl suburb - that's why all of the Toronto 905 downtown developments are very popular among residents. That's not what I'm saying though, I'm saying we use those energy sources as little as possible, and in the case of coal, phase it out as aggressively as possible. I hear you, but transfer times are almost non-existent when you're dealing with BRT routes with their own dedicated lanes, which really should be the standard and not the exception. Hypothetical as in, the world is hypothetically round?

Well, we're not manipulative like you are - we don't try and claim that what happened in the video happened in a vacuum, as if it's the ONLY thing that happened and the black kids came out of nowhere to attack the white kid. You conveniently left out facts that the fight was one in a long line of incidents in which both black and white students hurled racial slurs at each other and got into scuffles. The reason you left out this information is because it is CONTEXT which would invalidate your take on the incident: that these good white kids had no hand to play in the attack, that it began and ended when the evil black kids committed assault. I mean, even up until now you refuse to admit these basic facts, which suggests to me that you're either being totally dishonest or have a serious problem whereby you cannot admit even to YOURSELF when you're wrong about something. It's really quite a spectacle to see to what lengths you'll go to avoid admiting basic facts about this case I believe you're conveniently leaving out the fact that you called the victim in the Courtenay crime a criminal when you knew perfectly well he didn't have a criminal record - you just did so because he was black. You're also comparing an unprovoked attack between strangers to an attack in which both sides have been aggravating each other with racial taunting for some time - not the same thing. That doesn't make you racist per, just either inaccurate (if you didn't know better) or dishonest (if you do). But of course you do things like this all the time (leave out contexts surrounding incidents) which invalidate your absolutist views - so the claims of you being racist have more to do with your RECORD of posts rather than just this individual post. After all, all of your posts that address race, ethnicity or religion have the same aim: white Christians are good, everyone else is an inferior/evil destructive force.

Unless of course, you tax energy and use the revenue to continually fund efficiency programs of all kinds: home renos, transit initiatives, etc. Let me clarify, I was speaking of efficiency in the broadest sense - meaning I see replacing cars with transit as a means of energy efficiency. I'm not scared of nuclear, I just know how expensive it is to build, and believe there are better options for our energy dollar out there. As for coal - I think it's reckless to build considering we don't have a single commerical carbon-capture facility operating yet - at this rate it would take decades to outfit all the world's plants with this technology, and would drive up the cost to a degree whereby other means of saving/generating energy would be more attractive. The thing is there is plenty of room to redevelop suburbia. If you're not aware of it, you should check out what Mississauga is doing with their city centre/square one area - basically it involves developing on the massive amounts of surface parking at malls and power centres, many of which are large enough to support condo developments and/or entire planned communities. In fact, all of the major Toronto suburbs are creating downtown pedestrian districts. Also we can increase density in the actual sub-divisions by simple means: many sub-divisions make buyers sign agreements that adhrere them to neighbourhood codes of conduct, some of which include provisions against things like hanging laundry and renting out part of the home (you have to rent the ENTIRE home). A few years ago the province actually overruled the provision against laundry hanging, we could do the same with the anti-rent provision and increase the density. In a world of $200 a barrel of oil (or more) people will need to come up with extra money, and might want to move whatever items in their basement in to one of the many rooms which are never used in suburban homes and rent the lower part of the home out. You could also create easier access to transit by creating a series of pedestrian laneways in straight lines through the sub-divisions that end on a major street by a transit stop. You pay people for their property, and more people end up taking transit because they no longer have to make a huge U-shaped-walk to get to the bus stop. Which is why I'd rather people get from A to B without using a car - we already know how to do that, but we don't know how to ship something from China to market here quickly without using a diesel-powered cargo ship. I'd rather us use what affordable oil we have for things we can't do without, until we can retool our economy to be more efficient.

I'm not quite clear on your position, but it appears you're saying that everything will be fine, and that we'll just find ways of getting more and more oil . . . If that's the case, than why has oil production slowed down and even plateaued in recent years?

Of course we'll adapt, the question is how painful will the adaptation period be and how long?

Perhaps I missed other examples, but so far the two that Lictor has referenced have been the Buffalo hate crime, and the Montreal incident which Lictor claimed was a hate crime of black youths committing unprovoked assault on a white youth, but has turned out to be a case of two groups of students of different races hurling racial slurs at each other. So by my count that's zero Canadian examples so far. And as a rule of thumb, considering how radically different race is in the US, I think it's bogus to try and connect trends there with trends here. Thus I don't think Lictor can make the argument that trends in the US regarding a wave of violence by black folks against white folks (the exaggeration is his) is automatically reflective of a similar wave in Canada.

This is troubling, but there is more going on in Germany than: "Islamists trying to repress free speech," after all, there is a concerned effort among the German media and public to hide and downplay instances of intolerance against German Muslims, as demonstrated by the media reaction to the courtroom murder of a pregnant Muslim woman whose white attacker was on trial for a previous instance of racial harassment against her . . . This story was shoved in the back of newspapers and not mentioned on most TV channels . . . It seems as though both white Germans and Muslim-Germans have difficulties in addressing the underbellies of their communities, and until they acknowledge what's there, I fear this situation can only get worse. If you're going to make Widlers' entry denial to the UK into a free speech issue - than I assume that you rushed to the defense of Ernest Zundel in the past as well, right? You do after all, defend all bigots free speech rights equally, yes?

Most of us don't bother posting if we're not interested in a topic. Try it sometime.

Well, the production curve was proven true in the US before, and it appears to be on course to be accurate internationally as well.

That's not the main cause. The main cause is that easily accessible oil reserves are dried up or dwindling, and the ones which are being found are in remote areas far from market like mountain regions, uninhabited areas, or in the open ocean.

Of course, the point can be made that the cheapest energy is the stuff we don't use. ie - it's much cheaper to conserve energy than it is to switch over from one source to the other. And as you can see in Europe, you don't need to decrease your quality of life to use less energy - you just have to build your towns, cities and transportation networks with efficiency in mind. I think there is simply no way that, for example, the classic North American pattern of suburban development can continue in a world of peak oil. Even if we were to make the switch to electric vehicles, we would not be able to ensure cheap electricity because of the amount of energy required to power the tens of millions of electric cars in the country. That would mean many expensive nuclear plants or even more coal plants which need to be put somewhere - and no one wants one in their backyard. I think that this might force people to realize the totality of the lifestyles they've chosen. It's a lot harder to justify suburbia when you have to drive by the dirty coal or expensive nuclear power plants that produce the energy you need to drive your families' 2-3 cars every day. But car energy is only part of the problem - after all, we would still need to address the problem of shipping products overseas in a world of peak oil - you can't replace cargo ships with electric ones, of course.

From the CBC This is a problem which simply cannot be ignored any longer. It's time to stop ignoring simple supply and demand economics for the sake of continuing the illusion of plenty that we've been sold. If we don't start dealing with this problem immediately, we'll have a lot of explaining to do to our kids and grand kids, who will look at us with shame when we tell them the reason we didn't do anything to get off oil before the crunch happened is because we weren't willing to give up on things like an SUV, a 3000 square foot home, or weekend vacations to the Bahamas. No one should underestimate the potential damage and social upheaval that is a possibility when oil becomes too expensive for most people to support the energy-wasting lifestyle they have. Canada stands among the most to loose in all of this - how can such a sparsely populated country stay together if we can't fuel our transportation network? I was just debating someone on here the other week who claimed several times that there was no problem, that we'd be fine, that $200 a barrel or more oil would just mean more carpooling and nothing else. When I pressed them on the data that shows things wouldn't be so peachy, I got a "that's rubbish!" response - I genuinely hope that most people aren't this dismissive, because if they are I fear we won't have the public consensus to deal with this problem until it's too late.

Of course, because he's the most disingenuous poster this board has ever seen.

Once again, Lictor demonstrates why people don't take him seriously: He intentionally misrepresents facts, ie - the Montreal "hate crime" in which he claimed a group of black kids beat up a white kid, unprovoked - was in actuality, as Kimmy pointed out, an incident where two groups of students hurled racial slurs at each other and escalated into an assault. By posting the video of the attack in French (which some of us don't understand), and not providing any other info he deliberately hid the context of the attack: that this incident was one in a series of back-and-forths with racial undertones in that Montreal neighbourhood. Instead, he tried to paint "his side" (whites) as innocents, and "the other" (blacks) as villains, so that he could fit it into his "non-white people are destroying Canada/white civilization" worldview. And when he does, upon rare occasion, find a case that doesn't need to be misrepresented (ie - Buffalo hate crime) it's blown completely out of proportion, and is used to try and demonstrate some sort of rule rather than the exception. He also can't admit when he's made a mistake, or a bad argument, he doesn't make any attempt to refine or retract his views, he simply moves on to another line of attack, hoping to distract people from his errors with new material. That's why he can't admit to things such as calling a black victim of a crime a "criminal" for no other reason than he is black, because admiting to that would mean he's prejudiced, which is absolutely impossible, for Lictor speaks the truth. I'm making it a rule of thumb from now on to never respond directly to Lictor's posts except as means of dissecting his methods of misinformation - after all, as we've all seen, his factual claims cannot be trusted, and he's a dishonest debater, so there's no point in discussing anything with him in a rational sense, he'll just be evasive.

Give me some keywords to search with, I'll try and dig up something . . . ie - The neighbourhood where it happened, the actual crime police charged someone with, etc. Even you have to admit you wouldn't accept your own claims if you were sitting in my position. "Trust me on this!" just doesn't cut it on the internet. POLICE SAY THE CRIME WAS RACIALLY MOTIVATED. What makes you say is isn't? What do you know that they don't know? Or is this simply a case of you thinking if you repeat something often enough it becomes true? Still waiting to hear a retraction or an explanation as to why you called the guy a criminal. . . . And you wonder why I say you're evasive?

Still waiting for lictor to post an English news source for the "Montreal Hate Crime" so that we can verify your claims about it . . . I mean, you've had a few months now to do so - it doesn't take that long to Google. Still waiting for lictor to explain why the victim in the BC hate crime is a "criminal" . . . ^^^^^^^^ THIS Is why no one takes you seriously. We all just assume that when you reference an incident and refuse to post an (English) link about it, that you're just completely misrepresenting it in order to make it fit into your prejudiced "white people are good, everyone else is evil" worldview. But what do I know? I'm not a prophet like you are. I just live in Toronto and have never experienced any of this "reverse racism" that you claim is rampant and tearing the country apart . . . Where do you live exactly that this is such an issue anyways?

True, but we can only really control our side of the equation. Also consider that we're not quite as immersed in this problem on a day-to-day basis and as such it affects us to a much less degree (ie - we can decide to stop funneling money to dictators tomorrow - it's not as if the people being ruled by dictators will be able to overthrow them tomorrow, they're the ones who'll have to put their lives on the line to improve the situation). The Holocaust began someplace, didn't it? Dehumanizing and vilifying an entire religion was the first step. Frankly I don't want to wait and see if things get worse before doing something. Considering Islamophobes support things such as: discriminatory laws against Muslims and wars of aggression against Muslim nations, I'd say that qualifies as hate. I'm not clear on what you mean here. From what I can tell - the vast majority of Muslims in many countries want more influence on how their society is run, this may not end up looking like our idea of democracy, but it's democratization nonetheless. While there are some people who no doubt buy into Islamist ideology, most people tend to support Islamists because they are the only option for exerting pressure on widely-despised regimes because dictators have made free speech is illegal - but of course, they wouldn't dare censor the sermon of an Imam - hence the rise of political Islam (Islamism), which is filling the void that would otherwise be filled with regular old political organizing. I actually think Iran DISPROVES your theory: it's a country ruled by a theocracy which is disliked by the vast majority of the people, who may be somewhat religious, but don't appreciate religious leaders being involved in politics. Surely the events of the past few months in Iran have demonstrated that the people there are rebelling against religious involvement in politics. Who would become more hostile to the West? The dictators? Perhaps: but the population would probably appreciate this move, especially if it was done explicitly because of the corrupt and/or repressive nature of these regimes. And I don't think China or Russia would step in right away - after all, if they did then they'd become the new Imperialist bad guys in the eyes of the people, and most of the efforts being made against the West would be turned towards them. Because after all, the public in Muslim countries don't have an irrational hatred of the West, most of the time it's rooted in legit rational concerns such as Western support for repressive leaders. Where the did you check that? The Economist ranks Egypt as an Authoritarian Regime at #119 on their Democracy Index, for comparison, Cuba is at 125 . . . Which in my mind makes the regime much worse than Fidel's overall - because at least the Cuban regime has top-notch education and health care and a huge chunk of the population isn't going hungry. Really? Where have these approaches been tried before? I'm unaware of an example. I am aware that it was policy for decades and still is to this day to support dictators who give us access to natural resources we desire, and support dictators that act as proxies in regional conflicts on our behalf . . . Which is the exact opposite of my suggestion - and look where it's gotten us. The story in Iraq wasn't that the US rolled over the Iraqi army, it's that it didn't have the resources to secure the country after the war was over and prevent all the terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare that ensued. NATO has it's hands full in Afghanistan right now, and the situation is as bad as it's ever been, 8 years in. If the most powerful militaries in the world can't handle two nations of 30 million, what makes you think they can handle invading and occupying 1.5 billion people? I don't even think it's possible - the price of oil would go through the roof because the supply from the Gulf would be interrupted by the war, I think most Western economies would tank before it got up and running again - after all, the US only has 6 months of reserve. Besides that, there just simply aren't enough troops or equipment to do the job. How would you go about doing this according to international law anyways? Or would you just disregard international law? Do you think China would take kindly to this kind of aggression? Would they tolerate Western nations invading and occupying Indonesia? With whom they do a lot of trade? Or how would India feel with Western nations setting up shop on either side of them? It would look like colonialism all over again. Also - what EXACTLY would Western nations do once if they did succeed in invading a country - since Islam is the enemy, would they start force-converting people? Genocides? Just how exactly do you defeat a religion? The Romans tried doing that once, and in a few centuries the religion they were trying to wipe out ended up becoming the state religion. It wouldn't be the first time a state underestimated the power of martyrdom.

I remember that post, you posted a video from a French news channel on the incident, then you wouldn't post any other links to any stories so that we could verify that what you said about the incident was true (because not everyone went to Immersion and can understand French). I considered that pretty evasive. And considering how you much you were in denial about the basic facts of the case of other hate crimes which were white on non-white, I refused to take your word for it on the Montreal case, I demanded an objective source (in English), which you refused to provide . . . Again, my offer stands, if you can provide objective information from a news source that backs up your claims, I'll agree with you that this incident is a hate crime. Apparently it had enough racial bias for police to charge the perps with a hate crime <- This is what I'm talking about, you already decided that it wasn't a hate crime early on in that post, then when the police said it was, you start waxing bad-poetry about some sort of PC conspiracy that forces police to charge white people with hate crimes when they're just normal assaults . . . Even though witnesses told police and media the perps were spewing racial slurs at the guy, and cruising around town looking for someone non-white to beat up. So if your (yet to be proven) Montreal hatecrime is a hatecrime because a gang of people of one ethnicity hurled slurs at someone at another ethnicity and beat them up - why isn't the BC case a hatecrime as well? Why do you use the quotation marks? The only reason I can see is that because in this case the perps are white, and you have a habit of making heroes of white people in any incident and making villains out of non-whites, case in point: The guy wasn't a criminal - you just labeled him that because in your mind all/most black people are criminals. With this kind of prejudice, why am I, someone who approaches stories as objectively as possible, supposed to give any serious thought to your take on things? PS - I tend to stay away from comparing American issues of race vs. Canadian issues, because when it comes to demographics and race-relations, we're drastically different countries.

Of course, in a world of $200 a barrel oil or more, those big-box stores' supply chains will shrink rapidly or collapse altogether - suddenly California strawberries will just be too expensive for people to buy regularly, and folks will "buy local" not because of altruism, but because that's the best economic choice - if anything we'll be seeing much more demand for local produce. Also - farming will have to become more labour intensive and organic, because oil and it's products (insecticide) will be more expensive. That means more agricultural workers, which means towns will probably stop shrinking and start growing a little. The challenge is for now to make sure suburbs don't continue to eat up land we'll need for food in a few years with housing that may become obsolete by that time.

The thing is, I don't believe cars will ever become energy efficient enough so that we can continue using them at the rate we currently do. Even if they become totally electric, it will take a lot of electricity and that will probably mean many expensive nuclear plants, and we'll see electricity rates shoot up, making our cost of living increase as well. Personally I think the only way the suburbs can survive into the next few decades is intensifying and becoming more urban, which means redeveloping the power-centres and strip malls so as to make public transit attractive. Mississauga, Vaughn and Markham are busy doing this - developing downtown areas and re-developing roads like Hurontario to support things like LRT.

I'm all for municipal issues being dealt with by municipal taxes. However, I don't think provincial and federal governments can pull out of municipal affairs if they are either downloading (social) services which have traditionally been their responsibility, and/or not giving municipalities the political tools to properly manage their finances on their own so they have the resources to deal with these issues. ie - I believe Toronto needs to go to the province to get permission to put a bus/carpool lane on a municipal street. What's that about?

No one is criticizing you for your harshness. Frankly that doesn't faze me at all. What makes me never want to seriously bother with you is that I know if I get into a discussion is that you pre-judge incidents and cases based on the ethnicity/religion of the people involved and not the facts on the ground, and even when presented with facts to the contrary. You could pretty much say this about your entire worldview - "If group A is involved in a conflict with group B, than it MUST be group A's fault because group A is evil and group B is good" - You then do the confirmation-bias thing and dig up info which supports this view and ignore info that doesn't. I mean, you constantly talk about how evil Islam is (when what you really mean is Islamist) but you employ most of the same logical fallacies and biases I see Islamists doing online . . . Or other forms of prejudiced extremists as well, be they radical Zionists or Black Supremacists. That's been my experience with you - and a great many other people have this experience as well, so you can continue to believe it's because you shoot from the hip, but I think if you keep thinking like that you're going to have more and more of a problem getting serious responses.

Actually according to CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin, it would be $135. And for suburban families tha usually have 2.5 cars (one for each parent and perhaps one for the kids) that's a lot of money (you fill up the tank once a week for 3 cars, that's $21 000 on gas a year). Even if you cut back to one car, that's still $7000 a year on gas - and just think of the s**tstorms that would be a regular occurrence for a family of four if there was only one car - after all, you can't do ANYTHING in a suburb without a car. But of course it's not just gas that would increase, it's every product that uses oil to get from its raw material state to the store shelf. That includes food, so it makes even less sense to sprawl out from city centres and eat up farmland that could be growing cheap food in the era of +$200/barrel oil. People just won't buy avocados anymore because they'll be too expensive . . . Or California strawberries, or pineapples, or lettuce in the winter, etc. And it's not as if oil would stop at $200 - since the efficiency gains in new cars still don't make up for how many more people buy suburban homes each year, and the global demand for oil, supply and demand dictates it will continue rise rapidly, meaning that yes, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that not too far in the future middle class folks will not be able to afford to live in the suburbs. And house prices in the US were already being affected by oil prices when they were at their peak 1-2 years ago - far-flung communities had much higher price declines and foreclosure rates than city centres. The numbers just don't add up - the status quo is unsustainable. Source for the facts: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0013242 (Originally in Macleans)

So have Judaism and Christianity. In fact, this clashing only really stopped 60 years ago. Now look at today's situation - the idea that Jews and Christians would be at each other's throats for eternity seems completely foreign. It's a good situation, it's just terrible that it took the Holocaust to get here - Christians needed to see the endgame of antisemitism with their own eyes. They needed understand that in the end antisemitism, like other forms of hatred, transforms you into an inhuman monster if it's left to run wild. People should have known better then, but they have absolutely no excuse now, if they're honest with themselves, they know where the new antisemitism - Islamophobia, will lead them. The upheaval you're seeing in Muslim nations is not a result of Islam itself becoming more radical, but rather because Islamists (aka - those who don't believe in separating politics and religion) have co-opted many of the political desires of Muslims in many nations. Mostly those desires are for more justice and freedom, things which are denied to them by dictators and corrupt regimes & systems - many of which the West gives aid to. There is a danger of radicalizing the religion itself if this becomes commonplace. Thus if one is committed to promoting democracy and combating radicalization, they would take away the fuel for the fire: we would stop supporting the dictators and regimes which make Islamist leaders the only alternative for many people who have no voice in how their countries are run. ie - tell Mubarak in Egypt to democratize, or else we cut his aid completely. With this you kill two birds with one stone - you give people the chance to rally around political parties (which are no longer banned/neutered) and you cut the link between the West and the dictator most Egyptians despise. Like I said earlier - you co-opt the legit, rational concerns that people in Muslim-majority countries have so that Islamist groups can't use them to justify their illegitimate actions. Of course, as I've said before, this strategy avoids the need for mass-conflict with the Muslim world, (which would be catastrophic for the West, and even if it were possible to "win" - our societies would be in shambles even if we did) - I believe that some people, not saying you in particular, could care less about what's best for Canada or the West, but rather are so consumed by the same kind of hatred that consumed the nazis that they would PREFER a massive global genocide campaign. Well, you say that's the endgame, but let me ask you this - do you believe it's even possible to "win" a global war against a religion of $1.5 billion people? Especially since Muslim majority nations are the source of most of the world's energy supplies? And even if it were possible to "defeat" a religion, human civilization would be nearly destroyed by this conflict.