Wild Bill

A bigot? Do you have any examples, TB? I read his book "America Alone" and nowhere did I find anything like bigotry. Perhaps you can show me where I was wrong.

Nick, I'm having a hard time following your reasoning but is one of your basic premises in this argument that Steyn is a white supremacist? If so, you're dead wrong! Such a view would only prove you've never actually read anything Steyn ever wrote but rather cherry picked bits and pieces from excerpts published in "Lefties 'R'Us" magazine.

I disagree. The Law didn't need any clarification! The explanation posted by Mr. Ashley was quite clear. What's more, surely the police and Crown are expected to be even more aware of the specifics of the Law, yet they charged Mr. Chen anyway. At the trial the judge certainly seemed to find it a quick and easy decision! It would seem it is the ATTITUDE of the police and the Crown that needed clarification! They chose to use the Law as a stick to beat Mr. Chen. People forget that often the Crown doesn't have to be right about a law. Most ordinary folks are either intimidated or can't afford to fight such charges. At the lower court levels the Crown usually wins, since the attitude is "there's always the right of appeal!" Of course, most ordinary citizens can't afford an appeal, either in money or in time. Make no mistake about it. Mr. Chen fighting as he did was unusual. It was indeed a sacrifice. Nowhere did we see any mention of Mr. Chen receiving punitive damages from the Crown, or even court costs! Just the loss of his personal time with his market was a sacrifice. He was a small independent grocer of only a few employees, not the president of Sobey's. People are put in Mr. Chen's position almost every day. Hell, McGuinty has put the entire town of Caledonia in such a position! The Law is twisted to justify a political action or a different value system of those who hold the reins of power that contradicts that of the common man. Mr. Chen's case was different only because of the publicity! The very idea of blaming the victim so blatantly was newsworthy! We Canadians have a poor record for supporting each other across the country when someone's rights are abused by a misapplication or perversion of the Law. Americans are much more feisty about such things. A Rodney King is unfairly beaten by some cops and cab drivers on the other coast get upset when they read their morning paper! Canadians tend to either ignore such events or say "He must have had it coming! We don't know the whole story." Anyhow, the Crown was no doubt both surprised and disappointed. They've been getting away with such things for a long time now. Suddenly someone lifted the rock and we could see all the bugs running around! Politicians were embarrassed. At the end of any argument they are the ones ultimately responsible for the Law and its wordings. As a society we all owe Mr. Chen a debt. It may not fix the problems but at least it will be a little bit harder for the Toronto police to ignore rights of a shopkeeper.

I would disagree, Nick. It seems to me that your difference is all about the values of the speaker and whether or not you agree with them. I couldn't care less about that! My difference is summed up simply by the old adage "He who pays the piper calls the tune!" Unlike you, I don't believe that this guy has a "freedom of speech" right to a free audience when someone else is paying for the hall. The guy is a freeloading bum, no matter what his values!

Good point, Shady! I had forgotten how some critics like to play that game. Like when Harper was forced by the Opposition to shovel out buckets of "stimulus money" for fear of being branded an evil "Mr. Burns" and then promptly attacked for running a deficit! Back in the Reform days we used to joke that if Manning had discovered a cure for cancer the Star would have reported it as "Manning attacks doctors' jobs!"

I'm libertarian enough not to have a problem with that! Likely he must have had a reputation that led them to believe he would have been a disrupting influence but even if they had never heard of him before, so what? If its a private function then they have the right to refuse anyone they want, for whatever reason! If we at the beer table don't like the looks of you then find yourself a table of your own! However, the fact that they had spent time considering the decision is a strong indicator that he would have been apt to be "bad news". Sort of like hosting a Jewish Comedy Night at a local club and having Ernst Zundel show up. "I only want to buy a ticket!" says Ernst, "but if you won't let me in you must be trampling on my right of free speech!" Why would Ernst be concerned with free speech unless he intended to speak? The same applies to this parasite.

Aha! Now I know where Bill and Ted got the idea for the "Evil Us's!" This robot is a dead ringer! Hollywood is just full of plagiarism!

Some folks in this thread are coming from a rather strange position. We have a truly private organization hosting a session where they feel it is appropriate to have Mark Steyn as a speaker. They wanted Steyn because he was already known as an author and speaker of sufficient fame as to be interesting to their target audience. They must have felt he was a worthwhile commodity. We shoudn't forget that Mr. Steyn was likely PAID to attend! No matter how rich, most people simply can't afford to travel all over the world speaking at such engagements without being compensated. Then someone springs up from the woodwork and DEMANDS the right to speak at the same session! No matter that the organizers likely never heard of him let alone would have wanted him! Certainly, they would never have envisioned PAYING him! They look at him as a party buster and try to ignore him. So he starts yelling about free speech! Now, I can't speak for everyone else but there is also such a thing as free choice and common courtesy. If I've at a table in a bar with my friends arguing politics or the evilness of ABBA tunes and some twerp we don't even know expects to just flop down and take over the conversation, we're going to ask him to leave! We might even get a bit ambitious about it! If we were running a more formal affair and had rented the entire bar for the evening, there's no way we would expect that we should be legally forced not only to allow the jerk entry but also to give him free time in all our discussions! Yet that is essentially what this yahoo is doing about the Steyn session. He's a freeloader! He can't draw an audience or a speaking gig like Steyn can but he expects to ride on Steyn's coattails and get an audience for free! The audience will be at the Steyn session FOR speakers like Steyn and NOT for twerps like him! Allowing him to talk would be unfair to everyone who had bought a ticket. Freedom also means that no one has the right to FORCE you to listen to someone! What this little parasite is trying to do is to use your interest in a talk from Steyn as a lever to get you to listen to him! Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everyone with hair in their ears is entitled to a free audience, even if the audience has to be coerced to put up with you.

If you read Blatchford's book Jerry, you will see that that condition has been met! Maybe it is time to pack our bags. I fail to see how anyone could read that book and still vote for McGuinty!

You may call me a cynic if you wish but I have found that cynicism, skepticism and the logic of common sense serve me well with politicians, lawyers, car salesmen, carnival barkers, Jehovah Witnesses at my door and Caledonia Six Nation protester apologists on this board. Yes, I know. The native protesters did nothing wrong and only handed townspeople flowers. Several thousand eyewitnesses be damned. Videotape be damned. Photographs as well, along with official documents from the Ontario Provincial Government and OPP chiefs. Also, there was no Holocaust, Man never actually landed on the Moon and Elvis went home to outer space. I would find it easier to accept the last 3 points than deny that most of the native protest in Caledonia was mere racist thuggery.

I think you misunderstood, Shady. Christy never reported in her book that citizens had to show their Canadian passports. Rather, natives hand made native passports on pieces of coloured paper and forced citizens to show them in order to leave and return to their homes. Of course, if the citizens had any beer or often even groceries in their car that was usually confiscated. These were homes that were NOT on the disputed Douglas Creek Estates but were rather "caught behind enemy lines"! These were the homes that the OPP refused to protect. These native passports still exist. They have been kept by citizens. No doubt, some of their supporters will simply claim that they were frauds, printed by white men trying to antagonize the situation. Or perhaps they are simply imaginary. They may look and feel real but that is a delusion, since although it would be logical to accept what you can see, smell and feel is real we have already been told some time ago by CR that logic is absolutely a delusion and thus not only is not useful, it can't be trusted.

Perhaps it would be easier to simply give ALL of Canada to the First Nations! Lock, stock and barrel. With all assets and all DEBTS! Then we demand THEY support US! The problem is that the way they all to often look after themselves implies that millions would starve to death across Canada if they actually were in control! I'm sure that the dead at least would be "spiritually" better off and would have felt more "tied to the land".

"Treat you as a nation"...just what does that mean? Should we then treat Six Nations as a totally sovereign nation? What other nation on earth gives billions of dollars in perpetuity to another sovereign nation? Is that not tribute, by definition? What other nation on earth can only survive on the "dole" from another nation? Something just doesn't make sense here. The native position is obvious. They are sovereign when it suits them and if it means paying for something that's Canada's job. I think we need clearer and more sensible definitions.

Well Guyser, it probably depends on which cops you talk to. The entire force seems to have been very conflicted. When you have little old ladies crying and saying they'll never trust a cop again, or old men being taken to hospital with imminent heart failure after being harrassed and beaten WHILE THE COPS WATCHED AND DID NOT INTERFERE you're going to have some cops that don't want to say anything, some that want to admit they no longer respect their leaders and some that believe their leaders because the alternative is just something they can't admit to themselves. Anyhow, if your sources are right and money was a factor it could not have been that big of one. You really should read the book! It's an eyeopener, for sure. Christie writes with a very light dose of her own opinion. She lets the evidence and the eyewitness accounts speak for themselves, along with copies of official OPP documents and the like.

I've just finished the book and nowhere in it did I find anything to agree with this premise. The province had no problems with expense at all. It was deemed worth it, politically. The cops referred to the town as "Cashedonia", due to all the overtime money. No one had any problem at all with being paid. The cops wanted to end the standoff because they were sick at heart at being ordered to "protect the natives from the townsfolk" and to arrest ONLY townsfolk! Many of them initially complained. Those that did were promptly transferred or demoted. Their union tried to stick up for them but to no avail. So the cops did nothing because they were specifically ordered to do nothing! McGuinty was terrified of an Ipperwash situation, after he had worked so hard to crucify Harris over how he had handled it. With Caledonia, things escalated so badly because he kept drawing lines in the sand that the protesters would just promptly cross! They learned very rapidly that the province and the OPP would not do anything, so each line crossing just taught them they could get away with more and more. I'd love to hear from others who have read the book. It would make a good thread.

Well, I received Blatchford's book yesterday and already I'm about a third of the way through it. It's a great read so far! The amount of detail she has amassed is staggering. Perhaps that's because there was so very much happening. Pictures, too. If anything, the situation there was and is far worse than anything I had imagined! Blatchford specifically states in her preface that she makes no attempt to take sides as to the validity of the native claims or how they have been historically treated. Her book is about the Caledonia protest and the total breakdown of the rule of Law. From what I have read so far, anyone who reads her book and could still vote for McGuinty must be completely devoid of any moral sense of good and evil at all! Hell, what he did could convert Mother Theresa into a capital punishment supporter! It's a lead pipe cinch that Julian Fantino's opponents when he runs for Harper's party in the riding of Vaughn will seize reports from this book as ammunition to attack him during the campaign. And yes, the natives DID have firearms! In fact, many residents kept logbooks of the times they saw rifles and heard gunfire. Most distressing perhaps of all was the OFFICAL policy of "protecting the natives from the townsfolk" when virtually all the violence was coming from the native protesters! In fact, the man in charge was Ron George, the first cousin of Dudley George, the man who was killed at Ipperwash. I urge everyone with the slightest interest in the rule of Law and how easily it can be abandoned for political expediency to beg, borrow or steal a copy of this book! It also would be interesting if someone would write a similar book from the native protesters' side, hopefully similar in depth of detail and substantiation. The sheer volume of detail makes the idea of it being a racist fabrication sound like a denial of the moon landings.

Another way to protect our farmers without a dime extra in subsidies would be to truly level the playing field! First off, abandon all subsidies! Then impose tariffs on any country's produce equal to any subsidy that THEY give to their farmers! Second, if we ban any pesticide or chemical as unsafe for the food we grow, why do we allow the same food to be imported from countries that DO use those substances? We've been doing it for decades and it's really rather absurd. The sad truth about those pesticides and chemicals is that they work better than any alternatives! That's why we used them in the first place! When we ban them in Canada we put our farmers under a financial hardship to achieve the same crop profits. Foreign countries that use those substances have a big advantage in their price. Next time you're buying fruit from Mexico or South America in your supermarket you should think about what you're feeding your kids! We should place the same bans on imports as we have on food grown here. If the goal is truly to make our food safe then letting the stuff in on imports is just nuts! Changing just these two factors alone, together with applying those subsidy tariffs to shipping costs as well would go a long way to giving our farmers a chance to compete.

But it wasn't anyone on the town council who got punched out! That's my point! And if you're implying that the years before the protest broke out generated frustration, so what? That frustration did not make an ordinary town citizen a legitimate target. Ordinary citizens have no real power. That's what governments are for. If someone had have punched out Dalton McGuinty I could have respected that. Even if the developer and the council were both guilty as sin, it doesn't change my opinion. Punch out a developer then! Or better yet, his lawyer! Don't target innocents. That's the definition of terrorism. As for unions, I don't believe I am inconsistent there. If Ford goes on strike that's fine with me. I can always buy a Chevvy. I feel differently with public sector unions. They usually have a monopoly on a particular service and thus we citizens have no other choice. THAT offends me! You keep trying to sidetrack the basic issue. Screw the land claims! My argument is solely with protester tactics. Anything else is just a diversion.

You may be quite right! As I said, I don't pretend to be an expert on native claims and also that I often support them. In fact, before the Caledonia protest I was quite a bit on the SN side, as far as many of their claims. Again, it was the SN TACTICS that offended me! As soon as their protest moved beyond the Douglas Creek Estates they lost me. When they beat up those CHCH-TV camera men the protesters would have to have been mentally deficient if they thought they would have any hope of support from the media. When I saw Janie Jamieson on tv trying to deny protester actions that had been caught on videotape by claiming the tapes were a fabrication the protesters lost all credibility with me. So there's no point in trying to involve me in the legalities of native land claims. I'm no expert and often I would agree with you anyway. I just believe that in the Caledonia case the protesters took a cheap shot at their neighbours instead of their actual oppressors. I am against all forms of discrimination, including reverse discrimination. Two wrongs don't make a right. They just perpetuate bad feeling. Native protester Shawn Brant offends me for similar reasons. When he blocks a VIA rail line he is not inconveniencing any politicians who have the power to resolve their claim. He's pissing off trainloads of ordinary folks who BEFORE he blocked the line might well have supported him! Those passengers are not going to vent their spleen on their government. They are going to resent Shawn! He's the one who did it to them. Nobody should be treated as cannon fodder. Not red, white, brown or green. If historically some group WAS treated badly that doesn't mean they have the right to attack others who only share a skin colour with some of those individuals who oppressed them. In fact, in the final analysis I reject the very concept of group guilt! We are all responsible for our own sins and for most of us that's quite enough.

Now, now, Eyeball! Be careful here! There are some posters on MLW who will not allow direct personal experience as evidence. Those sockeye on your trolling hooks are merely anecdotal sockeye, which means they're imaginary! They don't become real unless and until you provide a cite or two. It's sort of like Schrodinger's Cat, with quantum physics. I can't help but be curious however as to the nutritional value of those anecdotal sockeye...

Your history differs with what appeared in the papers at the time. It was reported that the SN council had been notified of the building permit for the Douglas Creek Estates. It was only when the project was long underway and a number of houses nearing completion that suddenly a protest sprang up! Both Caledonia council and the developer were surprised, since they claimed they had notified the proper SN authority and had received no objection. Be that as it may, taking action against that specific site would seem logical. However, that's not the way it went. Here's the Wiki version, which seems mostly non-partisan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_River_land_dispute "April 20: The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), more than three weeks after the motions judge’s second contempt order, the OPP went to Douglas Creek Estates and arrested twenty-one persons under the warrant of arrest. Later that day, several hundred natives from a nearby reserve, some of whom were masked and were armed with bats, axes and hockey sticks, returned to the site. The police retreated and the natives reclaimed the site and set up roadblocks along the access street. During the evening, the protesters put hundreds of tires across the highway, doused them with gasoline and lit them. In addition, they set fire to a wooden bridge over railway tracks. Firefighters were unable to extinguish both fires because the fire chief stated that he did not believe the OPP could protect his men if they attempted to put out the fires against native orders. Several boxes of documents from the land developer's office inside a model home, were stolen and tossed into a bonfire. [2][3] A short time later, a hydro substation was destroyed when a truck crashed through its gates and was set on fire, causing a blackout and $1 million in damages." If you google and read more you will find that the protesters expanded their area of protests beyond the Douglas Creek Estates. They blocked a bridge which provided the major access into the community. They blockaded a regional highway. The destroyed electrical substation was NOT on the disputed estates! CR has persistently made the lawyer-like claim that either no one can be sure who took out the transformer or that it was white provocateurs. The latter claim seems ridiculous, considering that the transformer was well behind the native protesters lines. It gives rise to the silly picture of Caledonia townsfolk dressed as ninjas sneaking ghostlike through the native lines in order to destroy the transformer, then to stealthily sneak back across those same lines to get home! Blatchford's book promises to be a good read. I've followed her columns for decades now and I've never found her to be the type to lie or distort the truth. She can be mistaken but never deliberately evil. She writes with a refreshing, down to earth objectivity. She would have no reason to fabricate anything in her book. Anyhow, I'll know better of course once it arrives. I find that some folks don't even have to read it to condemn it most interesting and goes to character. As for my KKK comparison, while there may be a difference in degree I see none in principle. If you have a difference with a person or an authority that's one thing. When you take protest action that doesn't affect your real target in the slightest but rather is against the closest folks of the same colour...to me that's simple racism, by definition. That's why I find it equally foolish for some to claim that all native claims are wrong or that all natives have this or that attributes. How can someone say that unless they've met everyone of them? We are all individuals and responsible for our own actions, not that of the group we happen to live in or the colour of ourselves and our neighbours. I'm not overly familiar with large numbers of native land claims across the country but it's only the Caledonia protest that has offended my sense of justice. Again, not for the actual claims but rather for their protest tactics.

I support native rights too! I also agree with many of their issues with bands across the country. However, I have no respect for the TACTICS used by the Six Nations protesters in Caledonia! Those protesters did not target the developer, the municipal council or the provincial and federal governments. Instead, they targeted the townsfolk! They blocked bridges, tore down electrical towers, blew up a transformer that blacked out the entire region for days, blocked private citizens' access to their homes, tore through people's back yards on ATV's at night, shining lights into their windows and much, much more! The townsfolk have been their neighbours for several hundred years. There are long standing family ties. The townspeople as individuals were not the cause of the Douglas Creek development and they had zero power or ability to deliver a political solution. Yet virtually all of the protest hurt them! They were treated as cannon fodder. I guess when an aboriginal protester is angry, any white face will do. I've said a number of times before, if the protesters had wanted to barricade the street that their MP, Diane Finley or better yet, drive ATVs around Queens Park or through Dalton McGuinty's back yard I would have cheered them on! Hell, I would have chipped in for gas! Protest should never be targeted at innocents. It should always be specifically aimed if not at those individuals directly responsible at least at those with the specific ability to satisfy your demands. I see no difference between many of the tactics used by native protesters in Caledonia and that of some of the KKK's history! When you target someone simply and only because of their race, that's wrong! It's as wrong for a red man to do it to a white as it is for any other. Even the protesters at OKA targeted the local municipal government and the police FIRST! Following it up by blocking a main traffic artery and forcing city folks into a long, time consuming detour cost them virtually all of their white neighbours' support, however. IMHO, that was a mistake. In effect, at both locations, the native argument seemed to be "Oh, sorry I punched you in the head but hey, it's not my fault! Your government made me do it! You should support my protest against that government!" The very idea is ridiculous. Human nature just doesn't work like that. If someone punches you in the head your reaction is quite simple and targeted at the person who hit you! So when you say we should atone for past wrongs, I say to you "which ones?" There are hundreds of bands across the country. Many have legitimate cases. Many don't! Most target their protests at those with the power, rather than just the closest group of white folks.

I have a problem with this idea. My dog weighs 90 lbs! She needs those plastic bags from the grocery store when I take her for a walk a few times a day. I tried to train her to use those "green" re-usable shopping bags but it just got too ugly! I'll never try that again! I don't think all those "eco-warriors" have thought it all the way through or maybe they just aren't dog lovers. Whatever. I do hope they don't succeed in banning them, however. If they do, will I have to shoot my dog?

Same old, same old. Ad hominem, ad hominem. You're as predictable as a sunrise. Your arguments on this matter always boil down to: "I'm right, you're wrong and everyone who disagrees with me must be crazy!" You dismiss what others have personally experienced as imaginary and yet expect mainstream Canadians to accept aboriginal oral history as gospel. When you're that predictable you become boring, CR.

I wish I could agree with you but I don't think that would help, Michael. You see, bureaucrats have no shame! Post their failings all you want. They don't care. They've got a union!