kengs333

I don't know what "goo candidates" is supposed to mean, but I really think it mischaracterizes the party to suggest that its economic policies are "based off idealism".

You've clearly missed the point; I'm using "jennie-logic".

With certainty now, I will be voting for the Green Party this election. I do not agree with all of their policies, but in the end they still come across as the best alternative. My reasons: 1) Their commitment to improving the environment. 2) They are the only party that sincerely wants electoral reform. 3) Their commitment to organic farming. 4) A model of health care that includes preventative measures. 5) Their intention to do away with the Catholic school system. 6) Their commitment to renewable energies. The list of what I don't like about the Green Party is equally long, but in the end not as significant. I do not care for many of their overly liberal attitudes toward social behaviours, nor do I care much for the influence of eco-feminism on the party's policies. These things, if the right people manage to work their way into leadership roles, can always be rectified. I think the Green Party will have their best showing this year, although it's high;y unlikely that they'll get anywhere near winning a seat.

Right, and we're talking MMP, not PR systems in general. So what's your point?

What do you mean, "bent out of shape"? The guy made a living through his business, probably was just getting by, and for some reason the city can't change the property to commercial. Why? Not everyone is Donald Trump, having the ability to re-invent themselves when the need arises. All his hardwork, his independence was what was voted on. Killing oneself is a little extreme, but who wouldn't be indignant if in his position?

What? It's the absolute worst form of democracy out there! Hard to exploit? Yeah, I guess that's why every election seems to be frought with controversy, why elections have been proven to be rigged. If you prefer the way things are done in America, feel free to go there for awhile. If you're so pissed about immigrants ruining politics in Canada, and you in turn feel that the American system is better, then how exactly are you any better???

It only works fine if you want to maintain the status quo and deny the majority of Canadians representation in government. It's actually quite simple, and should be evident to anyone who claims to pay some attention to the Canadian political process. FPTP allows for governments to ignore issues which have no political value. An example would be the issue of Japanese Canadians, who after being ignored for many decades only received what they were looking for when the Conservatives came to power and they wanted to do something to prove to Canadians that they supposedly can get things done, unlike the Liberals.

Seeing that you never have anything valid or worthwhile to contribute, I suggest you follow your own crude advice.

There aren't actually "many European countries" that have adopted MMP, and those that have have shown no signs of instability or "bogged down" governments as naysayers have claimed would result. Minority governments often function better because they rely on compromise to succeed; coalition governments also represent the majority of voters, which is usually not the case in Canada when a party has the majority. Many majority governments in Canada usually have about 40% of the vote. That means the minority usually rules over the majority, and that's just not democratic in my opinion. The candidates on the party list would not be appointed by the party, and ultimately they would be accountable to the people because if they don't conduct themselves as they should, they will either not be on the party list the next time around, or people won't vote for the party if they are. Also, members on party lists are just as interested in a political career as those who run in ridings, and may eventually want to run as candidates in a riding, so what they do while party list candidates will be noticed. Just because there are some in NZ who want to undo the change to MMP doesn't mean the system doesn't work. The fact that politics in NZ functions perfectly fine and is more representative now is a clear indication of why MMP is worth adopting.

I don't recall ever typing "drive by busllshitting" in any of my posts, ever. Please refrain from using explicit profanity.

Many people who attended residential schools became lawyers, doctors, academics, businessmen. They were given opportunities that they would not have had their parents and elders been able to force them to maintain their "traditional" way of life. I'm not saying that the residential schools were as great as they could have been, but again I'm wondering just how suffering can be quantified and proven to be greater than that of other Canadian school children. I was certainly miserable when I was in school and I've yet to get over it, but the chances of me getting compensation is nil. (There's also the fact I belong to an ethnic group that is the victim of the greatest case of genocide in Canadian history. Again, no componsation, not even an apology.) Like I said, we'd probably be sitting here debating the the unjust behaviour of the Canadian government for not having extended education to Indians had they not established residential schools.

I believe the onus is on you to elaborate, not for me to answer your questions. I think that the issue isn't that they supposed still are "still in the stone age" but that many were living a lifestyle that no longer was viable in the modern world, and the Government tried to rectify this problem as best as they could. In hindsight, how it was undertaken may have seemed harsh, but ask anyone who went to school in Canada in the 1920s-1950s, and they'll tell you it wasn't always pleasant. I have watched interviews of Indians in which they admit that they never suffered the abuses that are usually highlighted whenever the Residential School issue is discussed; for most people, the trauma stems from being seperated from their parents and not being allowed to speak their langauge. Not all that nice, but let's face it the options they had were not all that great; either live in poverty on a reserve, unable to read, write, or function in a modern society; or live out in the bush, unable to read, write, function in a modern society, and try to subsist off of hunting. For anyone who has studied the lifestyle of the Cree, Ojibway, etc. in the North, their traditional lifestyle often resulted in starvation because of natural cycles in game availability, changing migratory patterns, the hunter's abilities. It was not a pleasant way to live. It's almost guarenteed that had Canada not made attempts to educate the Indians, then we'd probably be sitting here arguing about how unjust the Canadian government had been for not trying to improve the standard of life for the Indians. Let's not forget that the right to an education is something that all people should have; education is the key to a person's ability to better themself, and to deny that right to someone in the west would be considered a violation of one's human rights, wouldn't you agree? Yet deny their people the right to education is something that many Indian groups did for quite some time before the government stepped in and foce a change.

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So if a "white" lives in a city that is 65% non-"white" but the country on the whole is 70% "white," they "white" living in the city has no reason to feel like a minority?

Don't forget, old people don't have to live with the consequences of the policies they support. Hippies are conveniently dying off right when their ideals are proving to have been profoundly misguided.

So what, I was referring more to your misuse of statistics.

You may want to elaborate on what exactly was offensive about the post.

So what if you're read Josephus and Tacitus. Have you read anything about the ancient world that hasn't been published by Penguin Classics? There are references to prostitutes in the New Testament; are you suggesting that these women were not Jews? It's bad enough that we have a couple of people on here who spout off overly idealized nonsense about Indians, do we have to start with this kind of bs as well?

You should read the entire article, including the "correction" part at the bottom which revises the figure to a more realistic 22,300--oddly the same estimate for breast cancer. The numbers that I've seen over the years, mainly from the USA, show similar rates of occurence between prostate and breast cancer, with prostate cancer usually being slightly higher. The unfortunate thing is that breast cancer has been politicized by feminists, even though breast cancer is not exclusively a female phenomena--about 10% of breast cancer cases occur in men (a fact which is, of course, ignored by feminists). Breast cancer is an issue around which feminists rally because they feel that the medical establishment is anti-woman and breats of course have an increased significance in our society (why is it that women always seem to resort to using breasts whenever they want to achieve something?).

Visibile minority is a relative term, though. Sometimes when I'm on the bus, the majority of riders are not "white". When I go downtown, the percentage of non-"whites" is considerably higher than 18%. Under these circumstances, someone in a similar position who encounters this on an almost daily basis is going to start feeling as they are in the minority. It doesn't matter what the percentages are in the rest of Canada. Also, when you mention that 80.9% of Canadians are born in Canada, that doesn't mean that all of these people feel themselves to be exclusively Canadian. Many still have strong ties to ethnic communities. In some communities, this has already run three or four generations.

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Technically, I think that the self-determination of peoples is not illegal, although the manner in which some try to achieve it can be. In all the years that the issue has existed, it has largely been non-militant. When the political process wasn't going the way they wanted, the Quebec people formed a political party both federally and provincially in order to have the issue addressed. It now appears that the issue has played itself out, and people in Quebec want to get on with life and participate in a prosperous Canada. Argueably, the same thing could happen with Indian issues, but the electoral system is no geared to giving isolated groups scattered across the country the same right to representation. As a result, we will have to continue to contend with annoying and regressive tactics like "site occupations," tires burning in streets, blockaded railways...

Do the elders share stories of how the Taino apparently deliberately infected members of Columbus' crew with a virulent form of syphilis that caused much death and suffering in Europe? It seems to me that elders like to whitewash and sugar coat things a bit. I've never heard of an elder admitting that their people were once responsible for butchering whole villages, or torturing and canabalizing captives--facts which have been substantiated with written and archeological records.

Syphilis is known to have occurred in the ancient world; thus according to jennie-logic, it also must have happened that it was used in biological warfare.

Your hysterical speculations are really pathetic. I really hope that the majority of Ontarians approach the topic with more intelligence and vote the only logical way: YES.