Wild Bill

I'm surprised you can ask the question, Machjo! OF COURSE there's huge amounts of tax money from all levels of government! Look at what happened in Montreal with Expo 67 and their stadium. The official line was that tax money would be an investment. Afterwards the facilities would more than pay back that investment by renting out to private sports teams, concerts and the like. In actuality, what happened is that cost over-runs put the cost at several multiples of the original estimates and the revenue in the years after was nowhere near enough. The media was reporting a few months ago that Montreal had finally paid its Olympic debt, more than 30 years after the fact! This financial snafu has been the case of virtually every such scenario anywhere in Canada, ever! Try googling up the history of the Toronto Skydome financing if you want an eyeful. Everyone wants to get in front of the parade. They all know that ordinary folks will be taxed for years but everyone is so excited about the glamour of the event that no one wants to think about financial reality. It's assumed that the official line will prove true and when it doesn't - it's several years later. Lots of time for denial, evasion and outright lying by the politicos. If the question posed is "Is it worth it, regardless of the high cost?" that's one issue. Asking "Will it cost us more than you're telling us?" is simply naive.

You gotta love Rex Murphy! There's something about those folks on the Rock for reducing an issue to plain language and common sense. Perhaps it's a "big city vs suburbia or rural" thing. John Boy Walton grows up on a farm and learns from early childhood that you put a lever's fulcrum close to the load and not the handle. He learns that if you don't get the seed planted in time you'll starve come winter. Big city folks like those in Toronto seem to think that if you don't have enough bread the solution is to demand the feds subsidize the opening of more variety stores - that if you don't have enough electricity you just need to wire extra outlets in every house!

Geez, if your post doesn't spark a reply from jdobbin then I suggest we call the Missing Persons Bureau! He hasn't posted in weeks!

Well, if I manufacture toasters in high enough volumes that I can compete on the global market I guess I can afford to move to the east or west coast to be close to a shipping port. I would have to be addressing the global market or I wouldn't be in business, for reasons already stated. However, when you say "our resource-based industries would want to resettle in the US or elsewhere" I can't help but think it's a wee bit more complicated. You can't resettle an oil well or a copper mine. The stuff is where it is, after all. If it's in the middle of the country then too bad, you have to pay to ship it out. Service industries that are telephone or internet based have already migrated to countries like India. Unless we can directly compete with their labour costs we simply can never thrive in this area. Right now we have less and less manufacturing in our economy. You propose making our resources even more expensive. Since call centre jobs aren't up for grabs either I'm curious as to just what ARE we going to do? Draft everyone into the postal service and we'll all get rich mailing letters to each other? And what happens to all the workers displaced by this "green shift" revolution? If you're still in school all options are open but if you're 52 and have done nothing but bang bumpers onto cars on an assembly line you're done like dinner! Because of your age no one is going to hire you for these new "green jobs". You'll be lucky to get a McJob! All the retraining programs in the world are just a facade. It just doesn't make sense for industry to hire older workers if they can get younger ones. So if we went down your path, we better have enough welfare money in the budget to get through a decade or 3 of adjustment!

Not all "Persians" are savages. Who said they were? Why do you put words in my mouth? I would agree that the rulers of Iran are savages. If nothing else, the way they handled the protests over their last election shows us that! Anyhow, you don't have to convince me or anyone else on this board. Israel will do what makes sense for the safety of Israel. Meanwhile, if you want to champion the government of Iran, why not tell it to the family of Neda Soltan?

Your model is not a true parallel. You are ignoring the fact that the rulers of Iran have repeated shouted that they will wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Iran has also been caught a number of times shipping large quantities of armaments to groups like Hamas in the Gaza, so that they can keep firing missiles into the residential areas of Israel. So Iran repeatedly says they are going to destroy Israel, they supply and arm enemies of Israel and are working on getting nuclear weapons so that they could carry out their threats. Don't you think it would be a bit absurd for Israel to ignore what Iran has been doing? Someone says he's going to kill you. Right in front of you, he buys a gun. Apparently, you believe that since he has a right to have a gun you should just ignore him. You haven't convinced me with that argument and you certainly wouldn't convince the government of Israel. Given the reality of the situation they are being boxed into a position where they may feel they have no choice but to launch a first strike. The only other option is to sit there and get "wiped from the face of the earth", as Iran has promised.

Exactly! And someone has to have a reason to strike first! In this case, to be the first country since the US nuked Japan to end WWII to use nuclear weapons in an attack is NOT a cavalier decision! Israel would have to feel it was cornered and under threat of its very existence. Since the Premier of Iran has many times promised publicly to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth one would think that Israel would be taking the threat as very real. This same Premier keeps repeating the claim that Iran just wants nuclear reactors, even though they are sitting on oceans of cheap oil. During all his speeches, has anyone heard any words at all intended to re-assure Israel that Iran will not nuke them? Has any one heard Iran make any offers to guarantee Israel's security? Myself, I've heard diddleysquat! What I have heard sounds like Iran can't wait to get a bomb and start throwing its weight around. It's not just Israel that's afraid. Countries like Kuwait have already learned the hard way about aggression from fellow Islamic countries. This situation is getting to be downright terrifying, like the proverbial train coming at you when you're stuck on the tracks...

Well, my career was spent selling electronic parts to manufacturers. I started off when Intel first invented the microprocessor chip and ended around 9/11/01. So I saw competitiveness and efficiency first hand in business. By your methods, there would not be an electronic manufacturing business of any kind in Canada. We have lost much of what we had to not being competitive and again, by your methods we would lose virtually all that was left. The reason is that your argument only works with products that can be produced at a reasonably competitive price regardless of volume. Electronic products like computer boards, cordless telephones, Ipods and tvs cannot be produced for a local Canadian market as cheaply as they can in the volumes they are produced in China. You could supply the energy for free and it still wouldn't be anywhere near enough of a cost saving to make those products here in Canada at a price that anyone would be willing to pay, given the choice of many other cheaper countries. Nowadays I can't think of any consumer products that could be competitive if built in Canada unless we also were able to compete for the export market. We might make a few tens of thousands of dryers and washers and sell them in Canada. China would be making tens of millions to sell around the world! Much higher production volumes means much more competitive pricing. You can be as efficient as hell but who cares if you're too expensive? That would leave us with just a few, "one-of" custom pieces of electronics, like a central control station for one hydro electric generator in Labrador. No mass-production, of course. Would you condemn us to just being a resource-driven economy? That used to be the definition of a third world economy, where you were too primitive a country to compete with manufactured goods so you cut your throat trying to be the cheapest source of raw materials on the world market, competing with Haiti and Bangladesh. I don't think I'd care to invest any money in Machjo Enterprises...

Logical argument, however like all logical arguments you can prove anything if you only deal in the facts which support your argument. In this case, you might consider that the deal was NOT for the US to supply them with the enriched uranium for their proposed nuclear reactors! It was for Russia to do the supplying. You ARE right when you say that the West has no right to forbid Iran from developing nuclear technology. However, if Israel and other countries believe that Iran intends to develop the bomb and use it as a threat against them then they also have the right of self-defense. Israel is so small that if Iran lobbed even a handful of nukes at it there would be nothing left of the country. That means a preventive first strike may be the only logical option. After Israel exercised its right of self defense, other countries would no doubt exercise their rights to choose their allies and the amount of their support, including military.

Sadly, Israel is being put in a position where she really has no other choice. If you have reason to believe that Iran intends to nuke you sooner or later, what are you supposed to do? Israel is a very small country. How could it launch a retaliatory strike after Iran hit it with a few nuke-carrying missiles? There are no submarines in the desert.

In the words of the immortal Emily Litella, "Never mind!".

This thread strongly reminds me of what happened to Galileo, one of the earliest 'deniers'. Ippur se move, I guess. As Monty Python once said "WHO would expect a Spanish Inquisition?"

My apologies as well.

Ah Morris, victims across the country treasure your support! I'll put your name up for Block Parent of the Year! NOT!

If I understand you correctly, you feel that putting a tax on our gasoline would HELP our competitiveness? In the real world, I don't follow your reasoning. A tax would only affect what WE pay to ship goods back and forth within the confines of our own country. We have no control over any similar taxes in any other country. Since Kyoto and Copenhagen have consistently called for exempting even the largest polluting countries from any such taxes or costs, it would be most likely that China, India, Russia or whoever would NOT impose similar gasoline taxes! They probably would even add subsidies! So the foreign goods would have a HUGE competive advantage in the cost of shipping their goods from their borders to that of other countries. Once their goods landed in Canada, shipping would be OUR cost, regardless of being a domestic product or an import. The effect of such a gas tax would be effectively null. Have I misunderstood you?

Give me a break! This comes under provincial law, not federal. Blame Dalton's Liberals! Whatever. The criminal code is working just fine. The authorities heard what was happening, got a warrant, investigated and laid charges. Why on earth would you blame the criminal code and those who enacted the legislation? How about blaming the leftist, arrogant featherheads who have so poorly treated the animals in their care? I mean, does it not make more sense to blame the criminal? You argue that we should blame those who make the laws! I think you're WAY out in left field on this one! Here's another link: http://news.sympatico.cbc.ca/abc/Local/ON/ContentPosting?isfa=1&feedname=CBC_LOCALNEWS&date=true&newsitemid=to-humane-society "The Ontario SPCA, working with city police, raided the Toronto shelter last Thursday and said it found animals in such poor health that four of them had to be put down. Five senior officials were arrested and charged with animal cruelty." "Investigators said they found a mummified cat on the premises, which one OSPCA official described as a "house of horrors." OSPCA lawyer Christopher Avery alleges the Toronto society is reluctant to euthanize sick or dying animals and blames management for dictating euthanasia policy without regard for the animals' best interests."

I normally ignore CR but I saw his quote in your post and I just can't resist. Essentially, he seems to be forgetting that my point was about the POLITICS of the situation! I find it incredible that McGuinty seems to have forgotten that. The Crown can build a case but when he makes such incredible statements that the audience, including reporters, gasp in amazement and actually boo at how he insinuates that it was Brown who provoked the protesters, by filming those who were shining searchlights onto his back porch all night, as seen on the video. If this is "building a case" it seems a pretty inept one! Surely there are tactics more likely to be successful. By the time this trial is over McGuinty will have taken some strong political hits. It's conceivable he might win the trial, although I don't think it likely. Still, if he does, politically it will be a pyrrhic victory. My point still stands, that McGuinty has put himself in this position unnecessarily. He could have used other tactics as far as the Browns and easily avoided this situation, while still not changing his overall policy towards the Caledonia protest. The fact that he didn't just shows that in this instance, he was inept.

Man, you just won't accept ANYTHING that shakes your argument, will you? Your last post seems to really say "Just because the monks made major errors in copying their manuscripts the past 1000 years doesn't mean that the Gospel is still not absolutely, literally TRUE!" Go back through your own posts. RW is quite right! You consistently ignore his premise, which is that the data from the GW side is flagrantly unreliable and should be held to higher standards. You keep shouting that this doesn't prove that GW is not happening. That WASN'T his point and you keep avoiding it! I'm not sure if you actually believe in what you say or if you're just trying to win an argument. To me, that's a pointless endeavour. If you keep sliding off the actual premises the argument just can't be resolved and will go on forever. To me, the only real point to any debate is to arrive at the TRUTH! You can win a debate and still be dead wrong. Mother Nature doesn't care. Her universe works by her laws.

Of course it does! The EU is reacting solely to emotionalism from animal rights fanatics. I mean, we haven't killed "white coats" in over 30 years yet in Europe they still drag out the same old 30 year old pictures. The ban was very predictable. To an EU politician it looked like a free shot! It would garner them votes from people who really didn't know what was really going on. It's a comparatively small issue in terms of trade volume so they assumed that there probably wouldn't be any trade retaliation from Canada. In other words, Canada would not jeopardize the big money trade over a few seal pelts. To a politician, this situation seems a "free lunch". That's why I started this thread. Federally, we might have to go through the WTO. Eventually, we will win. The EU politicians know this, but for a few years the ban will stand. When it finally is struck down probably few EU folks will notice. Who pays attention to the WTO? Even if someone does pay attention, the EU politicians will not have to take the blame. They will shift it on to the WTO! The losers will be the Canadians who depend on the sealing money to help feed their families. EU politicians and animal rights activists couldn't care less about them. However, WTO agreements and political games don't apply on a personal level. I am free myself to change my buying habits to avoid EU products. So is any other Canadian who feels the same as I do. The bulk of our trade is with the USA and then China anyway. There's little or nothing we get from the EU that we couldn't get elsewhere. My own actions may not add up to more than a spit in the wind but if the idea catches on, who knows? Meanwhile, I still read the "Country of Origin" labels whenever I go shopping. If it comes from an EU country, screw 'em!

Exactly! Being tough is one thing but being mean or a bully is something quite different. I have no qualms about treating a bully badly but I would and do have tremendous guilt if I realize that I have been unfair to someone, even by mistake. It sounds like your uncle couldn't tell the difference. I hope getting his "comeuppance" taught him something.

Man, are you ever stretching to take a crack at the right wing! It's been common knowledge for years and years that the Toronto Humane Society has been taken over and run by leftist, fringe animal rights radicals! They have attacked other Humane Societies in the media for not "caring" enough for the animals and have demanded budget increase after increase to pay for their "no euthanasia" policy. The Toronto newspapers have been full of these stories for some years now. And now you blame it on conservative corruption? Good Lord! It's the very hypocrisy of the Toronto Humane Society and its leftists that makes this a story! I mean, being holier than thou about euthanasia and yet having animals starve to death in their care??!! Open mouth, insert foot, I guess!

Special resources? Why should MY taxes pay for another parent's dereliction of duty? That in itself defines your approach. I perfectly understand you, AW. I simply don't agree with you! I don't think your 'solutions' work in protecting victims. I think they are 'touchy-feely' approaches that are idealistic and not practical. When a child is being bullied, he or she wants it to stop NOW! They don't want a solution to be a long term process of trying to re-educate the bully. During that process the victim will still suffer. If the process is a failure the victim has endured the pain for nothing. That seems to be the essence of what is being argued here. Reading your posts and Kimmy's reveals two entirely different perspectives. Kimmy is concerned first and foremost with the victims. You seem to be most concerned with the bullies. You seem to believe that violence against bullies will only escalate their negative actions. That contradicts my own real-world experience. After a bully received a healthy dose of his or her own medicine I have never known them to seek easier prey. In every single instance I witnessed or directly experienced as a child the bully almost instantly stopped their negative behavior. What's more, I have never seen a successful outcome to the approaches you have suggested. When a bully is given immediate and reciprocal treatment in their own painful manner the lesson is both quick and powerful. There WILL be consequences for inappropriate behavior! NOW, and not later! Of course this will likely hurt the bully's self-image. It's supposed to! We all have problems but this is never an excuse to bully another human being. Making a bully feel shame, pain and embarrassment will likely block an inappropriate behaviour with bullying as an outlet for their problems. It would be nice if at that point the bully received help but that is a secondary goal. STOPPING the bullying is the immediate necessity! This is one subject where I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, AW. My personal philosophy is very "utilitarian". I respect what works! I'm afraid I have essentially ZERO confidence in doing things your way. If it's any consolation, in a school full of kids that believed as I do (and I daresay Kimmy as well) your own children would never be bullied! The same cannot be said for a school using your methods.

Were YOU bullied as a child, Eyeball? Do you have a personal perspective? Or perhaps you were on the other side of the equation and don't want to accept any guilt. Whatever. I never considered my feelings at the time to be righteous. I simply wanted to get through a pain free day.

And I still think you're naive! I can't comment on how things are done in your country but I have some experience with the way things are done in my neighbourhood. I've seen one poor 8 year old who had been persistently bullied at my daughter's school, time and time again gone to the principal with his parents. The 12 year old bully would be given yet another anger management session and the next day he would beat up the 8 year old for "tattling". One day the victim child attempted to fight back and was seen by a teacher on playground supervising duty. The 8 year old was hauled up before the principal and HE was given an anger management session! The parents finally sent their child to a different school, where fortunately there have been no such problems! Why get involved only to tilt at windmills? Trying to fight "city hall" is very time intensive and far from an easy task. I simply don't have the time or energy left to become some kind of "bully mentor" as you suggest. I'm too busy trying to bring home the bacon. What's more, I don't see why anyone should have to do such! We pay taxes to our school system. The system has an obligation to provide a safe environment for our children. They should do their jobs! When the system doesn't do its job, that forces citizens into vigilantism. Not because they want to do it but just because how else can they protect victims? If you have to get personally involved, then it only makes sense to take actions that are immediate and effective in stopping the bullying. In my community, you can't even expel a bully. The worry is that it might hurt the bully's education. My answer to that is, so what? A bully is ruining the educational experience for a NUMBER of victims! Expel the bully immediately. If his parents are worried about his education, let them pay for private tutoring. If you have that kind of spare time to take on "city hall" then perhaps YOU should do it! Nothing's easier than coming up with some great idea for SOMEONE ELSE to have to do! What you don't seem to understand is that to a victim bullying appears to be "crossing the line" between bestial and human. I had very few fights as a child once I realized that there was no moral reason to show restraint against a bully. There was no need to fight fair. If authority would not protect you then there were no restraints on how you protected yourself. A bit of creativity and you could arrange to have the bully hurt far worse than he hurt you! Most interesting, those childhood bullies who experienced that form of retaliation became quite civilized individuals as adults. I'm still friends with some of them! Yet of those I know who never experienced such retaliation they seem to be not much different as adults than they were as childhood bullies. I can agree with you in theory that feelings of revenge are not necessarily positive motivators but I find them perfectly understandable. It is an outgrowth of the frustration of experiencing the negative consequences of "anger management" behavioral techniques that never seem to actually WORK outside of an ivory tower, assuming you define "work" as protecting the victims first and foremost. It's just part of being human. I make no apologies for it. Why do audiences cheer for Steven Segal? Why is the noble defender such a box office draw? We older hippies still remember how Billy Jack would defend the hippy commune from the local rednecks, giving them back a taste of their own violent medicine. Where do you buy those rose coloured glasses today, AW?

Oh, I dunno. I was bullied as a child. I've never forgotten, or forgiven either. There are people walking around today that I cheerfully would walk past as they were dying of thirst. I wouldn't give them the sweat off my back. You have to have experienced such bullying to understand. Those who haven't have literally no concept of how it makes you feel. Worse yet, there's some kind of crazy idea that the victim just needs to "stand up for himself", ignoring that bullies aren't stupid and rarely bully someone their physical equal. So I would have been there cheering Kimmy on! Adults, teachers and other authority figures usually prove useless at protecting victims. They focus on the bulliess, making them sit though anger management sessions as the bullies simply use the time for a nap and then go back out onto the playground to resume bullying the same victims. When my daughters began school I would walk them in and from what I witnessed things are still the same today. What some folks don't seem to be able to understand is that kids are kids, by definition! Their brains are not developed enough to reason like adults. Child bullies bully because they CAN! They have learned to enjoy it and there is no real deterrence that they can understand. "Anger management" just goes over their heads. When a brain is that undeveloped often the only deterrence the child can understand is physical. If giving pain results in receiving pain the lesson is simple enough that the bully can understand. It always seems that protecting the victims is considered secondary. Rehabilitating the bullies is the focus. The excuse given is that this is more effective in the long term. Perhaps it is, although I don't believe that myself. What is obvious is that other children continue to be victimized over the long term. Victim children in effect are taught that they are victims twice, that authority figures will NOT protect them! Frankly AW, you sound rather naive!