Wild Bill

I disagree. My neighbourhood is perhaps the poorest part of the city, yet there is no evidence of any crime at all. Frankly, assuming poor people are all dishonest seems unfair, to me. I also don't see what race has to do with crime either. Some cultures may be more disposed towards crime, such as the Roma of Europe but we see criminals of all sorts of cultural backgrounds. We live in a Star Trek society. Just because we see a visible minority face is no reason to assume it belongs to a new, immigrant culture. It may well belong to a 5th generation Canadian. Again I say it, race today is irrelevant!

The world is the way it is, Michael. You can either deal with it or it will ignore you.

Haven't you been paying attention to what has been happening with insurance rates? They now set them according to postal code. Which determines your neighbourhood and thus the cultural mix. My insurance just jumped by over $700, from $1300 to $2000 per year. Perfect record, almost 60 and drive less than 300 kms per month. All because I bought an old house in the older part of town. I am giving up my van. There are buses and I'm getting an electric motorscooter. I worked it out and every time I make a round trip of maybe 10 blocks for groceries I am paying nearly $25 just for the insurance. It would be cheaper to take a cab! Neighbourhoods tend to predominate with a certain culture. True, there are many like me that don't fit the profile but why should an insurance company care? They just charge ALL of us!

I should think it obvious, Michael. First off, I agree that people are defending him because they agree with him. That being said, they are NOT considering trying to work with the school board! The reason for that is also obvious. Most parents have long since lost confidence in the viability of that route. They don't believe they have any chance of success, since the board doesn't listen and worse yet, doesn't HAVE to listen! It is theoretically possible that if enough parents could get organized in a given area and manage to get enough representatives to the board elected they could get some change effected. However, that could take several years. As I said, at least with a private school you have some clout - your cheque! A private school must be more responsive to parental values or they simply won't have any students. Public schools don't have to think about that. Why do you think that any time the idea of vouchers has been raised the school system is rabidly against the very idea?

Is it relevant? As I keep saying, it is culture and not race that is important. When I say that I can't help but notice that many make the mistake of assuming I am saying our traditional British culture is the most superior. This is a wrong assumption. First of all, one always has to take each issue separately. Context can alter everything. Second, some immigrant cultures likely are more conscientious about civics than others, or even that of those who are "traditional" Canadians. There are many differences and to make statements without considering them is like asking a one-armed fisherman to show you how large was the biggest fish he ever caught.

What are the chances of that? It's a real world, you know.

Again, I don't disagree! I'm am simply pointing out that there will eventually be repercussions that she seems too shallow to have considered. Every salesperson knows that if you piss off a potential customer he will never forget! If someday it is your job to try to get him to deal with you, you have made that job much, much harder than it needed to be.

Well, I would! What I find pertinent is that obviously, parents have no input into public schools today, at least not in this one with the policy of no zeroes. They pay their taxes and essentially must keep quiet. To get a decision like that made by this principal overturned would require herculean efforts and bags of time, both things that working parents usually don't possess. No, the only choice they have is to abandon the public system in favour of a private school. The school that hired Mr. Dorval survives directly on the choice of the parents of its students to pay their money. If they don't like a teacher giving zeroes they won't cut a cheque for the tuition. As a populist, I applaud their hiring of Mr. Dorval! I would be even more in favour of some kind of voucher system, so that parents who disagree with a no zero policy could directly pull their financial support.

No, you give her too much credit. I don't think that's what she wants. I think she has not considered the reaction of TROC at all! She is playing to a Quebec audience. She is thinking of ways to encourage winning a future referendum. Like most separatistes, she hasn't got a clue about how TROC feels or would react. Separatistes perpetually complain that TROC does not understand Quebec, when they know more about the far side of the Moon than what the people outside Quebec feel. Harper has no need to consider ANY demands from Marois! Why? Is she going to help his government in any way? Quebec has put itself in a position where it is no longer relevant in a positive way with Ottawa. Its only possible moves are negative, like separating. A party in power in Ottawa no longer needs Quebec seats to have a majority. Quebec threw its weight behind the NDP, the opposition party. Even if Harper did grant any demands from Marois, it wouldn't do diddley squat to help Harper! It would not translate to a single vote for the Tories. Marois would just paint it as how she fought the feds and won! Marois is like a person trying to play chess but lacks the wit to see more than one move ahead. She might eventually succeed in getting a mandate to take Quebec out of Confederation but she would have drastically hurt any sense of good will from TROC towards any negotiations to make it happen. She seems an incredibly shallow thinker to me.

Ad hominem, ad hominem. Yeah, sure! Racism, that must be it! After all, if I disagree with your POV, what other explanation could there be?

You might have posted this first. It's too late now. It looks like you are pulling just whatever you can find. Whether or not it is truly scientific is just the luck of the draw. There are many different types of GM food plants. Yet the anti-GM movement seems to class them all the same. This in itself is ridiculous. From what I have seen, the real worry seems to be not the plants but the pesticide. The gene-alteration allows a farmer to kill all weeds with Roundup while the crop grows up through it all with no effect. Where is a study on a particular GM food plant where Roundup was NOT used? Any true study has to be specific if it is the plant or the pesticide and most important which specific plant. An apple is not corn. You're just wasting our time. Credibility is gone. Monsanto makes fraudulent claims out of greed and its opponents will rig opposing "scientific" studies, believing the end justifies the means because they have already decided they are right. A lot of people are hungry in this world. A pox on both their houses!

Benz, you know full well that Danny took the flag down as a protest over the oil revenue split with Ottawa. It was a temporary thing. The flag was back quite soon. Marois has taken it down and as long as she or her party has the power it will never fly again! She has just added to the pile of ill will felt by TROC. People do not forget. And you still think it will be an amiable divorce! I want some of what you have been smoking.

Well, if that's your criteria I guess we should be looking at refurbished DC-3s! Does anyone offer a stealth upgrade? As I said many times months ago when we started this discussion, in modern times if you don't have stealth you might as well just scrap your planes on the ground. It would be cheaper.

Of course! Isn't it obvious? The boss had a huge heap of applications from people who were not in a category that could cause trouble. He had ONE that could! Staying or returning was irrelevant to the welfare of the business. You should also consider that cultures change over time. As little as 10 years later and that same applicant would likely have been hired. The cultures to worry about had changed, as far as the job market here in Canada. Different cultures became the worry. I think this is because we tend to encourage cultures to keep to themselves when they arrive here, removing reasons to assimilate. Not surprisingly, people in those cultures would tend to communicate mostly with each other. They would share ideas, including negative ones as to "scams". Ask your insurance agent which areas of your city are considered of a higher risk for fraud, and why. It's not racism but merely statistics. It is not based on race but on culture. You seem to have trouble grasping the difference. Race is an outmoded concept and in modern times is really irrelevant.

I disagree, Dr. Dre. Patriotism and pride are a part of human nature and serve a valid psychological purpose. We should be proud of our country and our culture! We should believe it is worth something. We should believe it is better than all others and strive constantly to recognize negatives and try to correct them in favour of positives! Otherwise, what is our country and our culture truly worth? We should have standards that children are taught and that all citizens should try to emulate. People need milestones and goalposts, examples of proper behavior. The culture we received from Britain during the Victorian Age spawned an era of development and advancement in science, technology, medicine and living standard that no other culture on the planet can claim. Even the Americans and those European countries that prospered at the same time copied it. Take that away and we become merely a colourless, drab assortment of amoral drones. I would not want to be one myself and I certainly would not wish such on my children.

Interesting. I assume that lack of obligation is still in effect. So why so much criticism of the Tories while you now seem willing to defend the Liberals with the same point? Incidently, I still don't recall you ever suggesting an alternative. Lots of talk about how "someone" should search for one, despite the lack of evidence that one exists. Or do you have a specific alternative and I simply missed it? I am getting old, after all.

I don't really know! Being fair to that "potential employee" was not my responsibility, nor was it that of my boss. Our responsibility was to the company that was paying us! We were responsible to make it as profitable as possible, in order to give income and security to all of us who worked there. In this case, there was a very real chance of an expensive problem. If my boss took a chance and things went wrong, all of us would have been hurt. The company was not some huge Monsanto but just a small business. Who would cover the loss? What if we simply couldn't afford it? It's a real world, Melanie. If YOU happened to have been the boss and you got the company into trouble, do you think any of us that lost our jobs would have thanked you? Or even if the company simply couldn't afford to give us raises, would we have thanked you? This was a very real possibility, not some academic argument. Perhaps your own situation has always been so secure that you just can't relate, I don't know. Anyhow, I had seen it happen to a couple of competitors. I was extremely glad that if it had to happen, it happened to a competitor!

GhostHacked, that was the biggest waste of 7 minutes and 26 seconds of my life! Both the interviewer and the guest made a valley girl like Moon Unit Zappa sound like Albert Einstein. She was spouting unscientific crap! Her group's study was about as scientific as astrology! I'm no fan of Monsanto. I happen to consider them one of the worst examples of despot corporation practices. Still, this woman was using a study where they not only fed rats GMO grain but grain with pesticides AND gave them water laced with pesticides! It reminded me of a study long ago purporting to prove aspertame, the sweetener substitute, was dangerous. They injected a lifetime's amount of aspertame in one shot under the rat's skin. Not surprisingly, there was a large lump! Just an example of crafting an experiment to try to prove what you started off believing in the first place. GH, I never trusted Monsanto but after seeing this clip, I don't trust those against GMO foods either. If they would pull a stunt like this then they are as bad as their adversary! Boneheads!

Well, if that's racism then I guess he was against all white people. As I said, the job applicant was caucausian The applicant in question was from Iran, having escaped during the fall of the Shah. Your definitions seem too academic for me. Cultural differences are quite real and in real world situations if you ignore them you find yourself in trouble. When I was a teenager I hung out at a local coffee shop run by a Greek immigrant. He would hire local girls, most of whom I and my crowd would know from school. Almost right away those girls that worked the night shift ran into "cultural differences". Many older men from the owner's family would also hang out in the shop. They would watch how we Canadian kids interacted. Often a waitress would laugh and joke with us. They might sit in our lap for a moment or give a guy a quick kiss. We never thought anything of it. It wasn't that big a deal in our culture. However, to the Greek guys it was a different story. One of the Greek girls who worked there explained to me that in her home culture, there were only two kinds of women - those you would marry and sluts! To these men, the Canadian girls could only be sluts, because of the way they acted with us. So these Greek men started treating them as such, trying to molest them back in the kitchen during the evening and night shifts! It got so bad that the local cops began to come in from time to time, just to try to prevent problems. One girl refused to believe the warnings from the others. She was a bit of a "politically correct" type herself and flatly refused to believe it was happening. That is, until she was attacked. Some of us guys happened to come in and heard her cries. We stormed into the kitchen and the fellow backed off. Just then a cop came in and we told him what had happened. The Greek fellow was dragged away. He seemed genuinely bewildered at being arrested! Eventually the Greek owner couldn't get any staff and was forced to sell his business. To me, it was an early life lesson about differences between cultures. My point is that to deny cultural differences can actually be dangerous. All cultures are NOT the same! A more modern example would be Roma gypsies coming here from Hungary. Of course they are not all trouble but it is one thing for you or me to take a chance. What if you have to worry about your business? What if any losses could conceivably hurt the business, causing other workers to lose their jobs? Can a manager take the chance? Sometimes, I believe he or she SHOULD take the chance! If things are fine, great! If there are bad ramifications, that's fine too. I have always believed that suffering from mistakes is the best teacher. I just don't care to have to share a lesson that I myself have already learned.

You are twisting the situation to make it into something it wasn't. I presume this is so you can set yourself up as heroic, I don't know. He didn't want to hire him because there had been a number of instances at the time in our industry of people from his country playing the race card if they were let go. My boss didn't want to take the chance of being dragged into something like that. And it wasn't race, it was culture! People from that area are caucasians. We already had visible minorities in our crew, but they were culturally Canadian. One friend of mine and workmate was of Chinese descent. She was from Alberta and her family was 5th generation at least! She had a mouth like a sailor and a great sense of humour. Often American reps from our suppliers would be up for training meetings. Some would make the mistake of thinking from her face that she must be a recent Vietnamese immigrant or whatever. She would put on a fake accent and play along. The rest of us would be in stitches. I was there. Not you! Don't try to twist it into something it wasn't. It was simply a pragmatic move against the negative consequences of a politically correct system. Frankly, your response proves to me once again that my boss had done the right thing!

What's wrong with YOU? Saddam never claimed to have the Bomb. He claimed to have chemical weapons.

Wyly, I had DIRECT experience with what I posted! I think you are twisting things to resemble what you have experienced, which sound like different cases. My boss at that time was in no way a racist. He was just very pragmatic. The situations I described had actually happened and were common knowledge in that industry. I am not saying racism did not exist somewhere - just that these circumstances were not based on racism. ALL cases are not one way or the other! That is just not the way of the real world. It is not a black and white world. Believe it or not, sometimes it is NOT racism to discriminate, only pragmatic! I blame the fruitcake attitudes of the government. Business doesn't care about race. They care about making money! It is interesting that by the 90's companies in my industry often went out of their way to hire immigrants from the middle east, for the simple pragmatic reason that times had changed and there were many customers and engineers from that area working in the marketplace. It made good sense to have people of the same culture on the sales force who could deal with them. Making a customer more comfortable with you is a good first step to doing mutual business.

Good point! We let people vote who aren't even citizens! It's totally an honour system that everyone is afraid to challenge, for fear of being called racist.

Thank Heaven! Wyly, I once had a manager show me a resume that came in for a position. The qualifications were excellent but the applicant was a visible minority fresh from the middle east. "Wish I could hire him but I don't dare!" said my boss. "What do you mean?" I asked him. "Well, the problem is that if he doesn't work out I could have a helluva time trying to get rid of him!" Instantly, I understood. If we fired the fellow he could pull the race card. Even if we eventually won, it would cost us a LOT of time and money! Before you say we were just being paranoid, this was a distribution business before computer inventory. We had just spent months fighting various government departments for refusing to hire a wheelchair applicant as an inside salesperson. The government folks just couldn't understand that there was more to it than sitting at a desk with a phone. The worker also had to run back to the warehouse for stock checks while a customer waited. Shelves and shelves of parts up to 7 feet high! Impossible to do from a wheel chair. We did have visible minorities among the staff but they had been in Canada for generations. We shared the same culture. We tended to hire from internal recommendations and so everyone tended to be compatible. It was common knowledge in our industry about problems experienced trying to fire bad employees who were recent immigrants - actual cases and not just biased hearsay. Our industry was high tech electronics and very much a "Star Trek" environment. There was little to no actual racism but a great deal of realism as to how our "system" was being abused. So the converse of your premise is quite true. The State CAN and DOES force a company NOT to fire an immigrant! Often government attempts to solve problems are "cures" worse than the disease.

This line of reasoning makes no sense to me at all! First off, there are always experts on both sides of any issue. You can pick from either side to prove anything. Second, they are still only opinions! Israel can't afford to play with opinions. If someone drops a nuke on Tel Aviv, who gives a hoot about opinions? Intel is never 100% accurate. The bigger question is always, can you afford to ignore a threat? The rhetoric out of Iran has been a two-edged sword. If Iran gets the Bomb they will instantly become the pre-eminent Arab country in that region, displacing even Saudi Arabia. All of her neighbours will have to dance to Iran's tune. It's unlikely those countries are happy with that idea. While Iran keeps ratcheting up its propaganda about its nuclear capabilities they are also causing more and more fear to Israel. We saw what happened with Saddam when he tried to make the world believe he had WMDs. The world believed him! That's why he got invaded, deposed and eventually killed. It's like someone with a big bomb playing games with a match. If he scares someone enough, they might feel they have no choice but to shoot him! Meanwhile, it would seem some people are trying to tell Israel "Oh, you're just being silly! Stop being so paranoid!", as if Israel has absolutely no reason at all to fear anything Iran might do. As I said, it makes no sense to me at all.