Wild Bill

You're dodging my point! When we no longer have the resources to participate in such missions all the points you've made become moot. We had nothing of substance to send to Iraq. Period. End of story.

Why did bootleggers shoot each other during Prohibition? It's all about MONEY! The parallels with today's drug laws and Prohibition are so obvious that for years now I've suspected that key politicians are likely "on the take" to keep drugs illegal and maintain the incredible profit factor.

The "...logical, rationale(sic!)and correct Chretien act..." was to stay out of Iraq because after sending both our guys and our plane to Afghanistan it would have been ferociously embarrassing to Chretien to have the entire world see how poor and limited our resources had become! It had nothing to do with some higher morality on Chretien's part and everything to do with the Liberals having turned Canada into a toothless tiger on the world "peacekeeping" stage, no matter how many different ways you'd like to spin it!

Well, that's not going to change! It's Prohibition all over again! Millions of Canadians use drugs. Most of them likely "soft" drugs like marijuana but still, huge numbers. They don't accept the rationale behind the prohibition laws and find the chances of getting caught remote. So they ignore the laws and buy the products, just like bootleg liquor with Al Capone. To me, anti-drug laws are the ultimate in social conservatism. Also the ultimate in futility. Legalization would wipe out huge areas of organized crime overnight. Sure makes a lot of criminals rich, though. Meanwhile, we always have a place available in a jail for a kid caught smoking a joint but we have months-long waiting periods for hard core users who want to get clean. The entire situation is a smoke and mirrors joke delivered by politicians looking for photo ops from the Ned Flanders contingent. And the rest of us Canadians have to pay for the show with our taxes.

Yep, you're speaking the sad truth! Passing laws is easy. After all, that's what politicians are paid to do. ENFORCING laws costs money! You need more police and you need to monitor judges to make sure they don't dilute the sentencing intentions. Sounds good in the papers, 'tho.

Well, just because a lot of people are chasing China doesn't automatically make it a good idea. I'm becoming rather curious if ANY country has a positive balance of trade with China! I'm starting to suspect that the Chinese have been very clever at discouraging access to their domestic market while making all the polite noises to ensure unfettered access to all the Wal-Marts of the rest of the world. I would not be at all surprised if we find that we are all like the proverbial donkey who is being led by a carrot on a string. All through your posts PT I get the impression that you are taking access to China's consumers for our producers as a given. To me that seems an unproven assumption. China is a country run by economic warlords. They've shipped us poisonous food and goods produced without even lip service to anti-pollution measures. They routinely ignore any patents or copyright laws and make BILLIONS in ripoff movies, music and software! Unless the political situation in China changes I suggest we should follow an old trick of business that has done well for me. When I get a "bad" customer who is either too rude and demanding or just not likely to pay his bill I tell him that I have such a long backlog that perhaps he should try somewhere else. Then I give him a competitor's card! Let such a customer tie up my competitor and make HIM lose money!

You've made this claim before, PT. Considering that by the dictionary and the words and deeds of the old Progressive Conservatives we never had a conservative party BEFORE this one, just what is YOUR definition of a conservative party? As I say, you seem to have a completely different dictionary than one that I've ever seen. So I'm asking for YOUR definition, since it seems to be unique!

I try to avoid Chinese products. Sometimes it's almost impossible to avoid but I do what I can. It's not so much that I want to champion Canadian products, although I do but not to an extreme. Or that I'm worried about poisonous additives, although I am. Having my kids suck on small toys coated in lead paint or losing my cat and dog to poisoned food does concern me. My pets are part of our family. I know that other countries have occasionally had problems with food quality but at least if I support our domestic food industry there's some control over the source. A Canadian inspector in China has no power whatsoever. No, mostly it's that I just can't shake the image of that brave young fellow standing in front of a tank in Tiamenen Square. You know, the one that apparently afterwards was arrested and we've never seen again? I don't believe that trade with China is in our interest when it is so overwhelmingly at a deficit in China's favour. Also, while I have nothing against China's people I have little to no respect for the morality of its leadership. We will never stamp out software, music and DVD piracy when it's China's leaders who own the factories. Frankly, anyone who supports China seems to me to be a few bricks short of a load! Good hearted, maybe, but naive about the way trade is actually being done. Wait till they start dumping cheap cars here! Tell your kids to try for a job in the Post Office. We can build our economy by mailing letters to each other.

Lemme see if I understand your argument. A drunk is responsible for the deaths of his children. However, some OTHER GUYS have a poor respect for justice so he should get off lightly? Even more so, because a cop in Vancouver beat some delivery guy up? Unless you meant something completely different I guess you're saying that no one should make any attempt at enforcing the rule of law at all...

I think that the ancient Athenians are hardly a direct parallel. I would assume that the laws and customs of their society were quite different than that of ours today. It's not likely that Canada would morph into a twin of your example and vote for forced suicide. Although for Danny Williams I might make an exception! If your point is that our culture needs checks and balances we have no disagreement. I'm not at all suggesting anarchy, although I tend to think of myself at times as a Heinlein 'rational anarchist'. Rather, I'm talking about who gets to choose what is legal and what is not. You have stressed repeatedly that you don't want the 'mob' deciding to abuse your inherent rights. When Trudeau gave us a European style of Charter of Rights didn't that negate the concept of 'inherent'? Be that as it may, I don't see where I ever suggested that populism means no laws, no constitution and no rights, where referendums would be held on everything and anything, over and over with no sense of precedent. To me, things would be mostly as they are now, with the SIGNIFICANT exception that before a law of major consequence, like a new definition of human rights, could be enacted it would have to stand some far more populist test than our present system, where whoever has a majority government can whip their members into voting as the PMO demands, with little or no connection to the views of the majority of Canadians. I think we are both talking about balance here. I just see things as far less democratic than it seems you do. When Paul Martin's government held their vote on same-sex marriage it seemed to me to be devoid of any sense of representing the will of the people. I myself happened to agree with the vote but my sense of democracy was totally offended. I wanted the Bill to be passed in a free vote, not by a gang of 'Whipped' barking trained seals. What do you think the chances are of an MP like Diane Finley, who represents the people of Caledonia, Ontario, getting up in the Commons to raise the plight of her constituents under the native protests that have just had their 3rd year anniversary and put forth a private members bill based on the popular feelings of the voters of her riding? Given the political stand of her party, it would be a safe bet those chances would be zero! Finley is NOT the representative of her constituents to the Commons. She is the Tory representative to carry the views of her party back to the people. That is one of the main things that Reform wanted to change. You seem to feel that it would allow some righteous group of social engineers to turn Canada into a 'Ned Flanders' wonderland, after that character in "The Simpsons". I submit that if the system was truly populist such a thing would be impossible unless the majority of Canadians believed in saying "Oakely-dokely, neighbour!" No, it would never happen. I grant that from time to time things might not get changed in the manner some would want. Some of those times might be mistakes. Yet it is the ability to make mistakes and learn from the consequences that makes for the best teaching. If we always have to do what some elite tells us to do it is impossible to ever learn anything from experience and reason. Instead, we would have substituted them for 'indoctrination'. I'm not overly fond of Rush Limbaugh but he did coin one saying that I had to admire. He said that "A liberal is someone who defines 'freedom' as the freedom to agree!" A Reformer instantly would have known what he was talking about. You see, TB, populism in Reform never meant that only an 'elite' from Ned's church would have been allowed to set our laws. It would have meant that EVERYONE would have had more say, including YOU and everyone else who believed as you do! Please don't take that as a slam against your assumption. It was perfectly understandable, given that historically ALL the other parties have co-opted the concept of populism for their own ends! Reform however WAS different! Not perfect or utopian, yet they operated so openly with policy power clearly set out to come from the grassroots imbedded in their very structure that it would have been very difficult if not impossible for any one lobby group to take control. Ah well, maybe something as good will come along again before I die! Meanwhile, with things the way they stand now whenever someone says that he's protecting my rights I instinctively check if my wallet is still in my pants pocket.

I snipped a bit of your answer for brevity but in the entire thing I still never got an answer to my question! Do you misunderstand or are you simply dodging the issue? Forgive the capitals but I see no recourse but to shout: WHO DECIDES ON THE LAWS? WHO ESTABLISHES THE CONSTITUTION? You say you fear some majority government doing what it pleases and trampling on your rights. Well, who defined your rights? I was there when the Liberals enacted the new Charter of Rights and our Constitution. There was no referendum. Many things were left out. Your realize that you have no right to your property, don't you? It's highly unlikely that any government would take it from you as a trivial incident but if the issue was important enough they could and would expropriate it and tell YOU how much is a fair price for it! And you would be liking it! Worse yet, it's never, EVER likely to change! The amending formula is a beaut. You should read it for yourself. There's more chance that you would win a national lottery 10 times than seeing any amendment happen in Canada. The wording appears democratic but it just could never happen. We might be the only country in the world to have a constitution incapable of ever being changed. I guess we were so confident that our words were true, righteous and perfect that we cast them in stone, forever more. Surely all those other countries with all those amendments over the years were just a lot less intelligent and moral than we were. So by your lights how should a country's laws occur? Should we have committees made up of yourself and those who agree with you? Or just me and my friends? Or the members of the Tragically Hip? I was going to suggest Rush but I think their lyrics might frighten someone of your political persuasion. Anyhow, I'd be interested in an actual answer. So far all I've heard is that you like things as they are. You haven't made a claim either way as to being an elitist but if it walks and quacks what should we believe?

Thanks for the link! I found it interesting. I'm not sure if it's a viable group behind it or just one or two "curmudgeons" like myself. I intend to check them out a little further. Yes, you did indeed have a candidate in Kingston! More than one election, too. Reform took well over a million votes in Ontario at its peak. The numbers had been slowly growing, at least outside of the 416 area. Then again, any type of Tories never do well in the 416 so that was expected. The core of Toronto seems basically a welfare entitlement mentality that supports those who give them wealth rather than help them create it. Anyhow, I suspect that the "Back to the Future" movement will need a charismatic leader a la Manning to have any hope of success. As I've often said, it's not enough to prove an incumbent choice bad. You have to also give an inspiring alternative. If you're interested, you might want to google up "Centre for Conservative Studies", which is something Manning has been involved with for some time. He understood that the Liberals had held sway for so long that many people had never seen anything else! Conservatism needed to flow UP from a "grassroots" (there's that word again! I think MadMax was right when he said that the traditional parties hate and fear the grassroots. Mainly because the last thing they want to do is listen to them and be bound by them!) baseline!

I'm missing something here. I would put NO limits on populism! At least, none other than what laws have been democratically enacted. Where your argument confuses me is that I don't see where you think laws and civic values originate. Who decided that your values are right and others wrong? Who decides when a minority view should supercede that of a majority's? It's all very well to declare that a particular POV is "mobocratic" but from where is the authority to do so derived? Does it come from you? From me? Celine Dion? To me, a country's laws should all stem from its people. I guess I'm supporting the innate concept of British Common Law. I don't see from your argument where laws would come from, except from some kind of elite. Perhaps you could elucidate.

Once again I think TB and PT have missed an essential point. Reform never intended to curtail rights and privileges of any minorities. Or outlaw abortion or whatever. What Reform DID want was such issues to be put to the entire population of Canada and laws changed or left alone to fit populist values! Look at how Harper introduced that same-sex marriage Bill as soon as the Tories had assumed power. It was obvious that it would never pass or reverse the decision to make such unions legal. That was never the point. What WAS important was to have a free vote in the Commons, something the Liberals had denied Canadians! To my mind, you're either a democrat or an elitist. There's no middle ground. If you're so sure that your values are correct that you expect the law of the land to back you over the wishes of the majority of your country's other citizens then there's no way I can see how you can say you believe in democracy. What you're actually expousing is a 'tyranny of the minority', with a lot of rationalization to make excuses for your belief. I support same-sex rights, including marriage. I favour drug legalization. I would repeal laws against prostitution. I believe in a woman's right to choose and also in a person's right to take their own life. Yet I enthusiastically became a Reformer! Why? Because in my 50 some years on this earth they were the one and only party to ever even ask me what I thought and cared about! The others all told me what I SHOULD care about, which is an entirely different thing! To me, a citizen should NEVER hold blind trust in any political authority! I should think that anyone who actually looks at the words and deeds of governments would instantly see that often they make horrendous mistakes! I suspect that we are too far apart in this area to ever change one another's mind. To me, it seems that many folks are not looking to their elected representatives and their parties to be a vehicle to ensure their personal freedoms but rather they are searching for some kind of "god father" who will "look after them". Hence the virtual universal prevalence of brokerage politics in our political system. As for Stockwell Day, he was a bitter lesson to Reformers but we shouldn't forget that he did get voted out at the first opportunity. Day kept his Creationism side well hidden during his leadership campaign. Most of us knew little or nothing about it. There was a feeling that Manning had become a bit to obvious at manipulating the membership and many of us felt that it might be better to have a change. When we saw what we had chosen as an alternative we were as horrified as anyone else! To make the claim or implication that the majority of Reformers agreed with Day and his evangelical beliefs, or even knew about them before they cast a vote for him is simply not true. Frankly, its just an partisan slam made in ignorance. Anyhow, as I said, I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I'd like to see some proof, PT! Just don't confuse any factors. It's obvious that there were some social conservatives in the old Reform Party. However, the party also specifically kept religion and social conservative values out of core policy. They WERE in favour of free votes and better yet, national referenda on important social issues. Unlike the other parties, they believed that the people of Canada as a whole had a right to decide such things for themselves. Even the 'social conservative' members were perfectly willing to abide by the will of the majority, as opposed to the other parties who traditionally just impose their own values if they happen to hold a majority at the time. So don't give me examples of the mere fact that Reform had some bible thumpers in the ranks as indicative of the entire party's philosophy. Liberals and PCs had some extremists too. Hedy Fry, Elsie Wayne or Carolyn Parrish ring any bells? You may or may not be right that the majority of Canadians don't like Harper. The scene hasn't totally played out yet so we can't be sure. However, history HAS clearly shown that far more Canadians supported Reform than the old PC party. Just look at the numbers of what a pittance was left of the old PCs at the time of the Reform/Alliance merger. The PCs were desperately trying to maintain official party status! One more election would probably have finished them off completely. The Reform movement came from nowhere to Official Opposition status in about a decade or so. The entire Alliance trip was done not because Reform had peaked and had no room for growth. It simply wasn't growing fast enough to suit its leadership! Meanwhile, the PCs were shrinking every year and showed no signs at all of ever staging a comeback. If the Right splits again it's entirely possible that Reform values may again assert themselves and the party resume a slow growth towards an eventual majority. Better late than never. Or, the Liberals may see the parade and once again morph their values to suit getting out in front to lead it! They have no fixed ideology or values at all and historically have shown many times that they are willing to be whatever it takes to assume power. They may become Reformers! Not in name of course but maybe in word and deed. Either way, many of us believe it would be good for Canada. Meanwhile, perhaps it's the resemblance to the old PC party that is at fault for holding Harper away from any majority! One thing's for sure, Canadians are in no hurry to revive the PCs!

I've been reading posts from both you and Progressive Tory and I think you have a completely wrong idea of what were the core values of Reform. Both of you seem to have it in your heads that it was some kind of Jimmy Baker Christian Right party and seem incapable of seeing it as anything else. This is completely contrary to what I experienced as not just a member but a strong supporter who served as a riding director for some years. You seem to think that any dissatisfaction must be over social conservative/religious lines. My experience was that few members could have cared less about those issues! No, there were some FAR stronger differences between Reform and the present CPC, such as the end of ruthless party solidarity. Sometimes we see some freedom as with how Ingnatieff allowed his Nfld MPs to break ranks but only as a token, toothless gesture. Fiscal responsibility? The masses in Central Canada want bailouts. When that doesn't work they're not going to blame themselves. They'll blame Harper for doing what they wanted! Senate reform? Harper caved to expediency. How about something simple and democratic, like party members determining party policy from the grassroots up? Today we have exactly the same situation that caused so many voters like myself to abandon the old PC party. They will sign you up for lots of committees but it's all smoke and mirrors. Absolutely nothing you decide will ever be binding on the party leadership. PT seems to want us to believe that the old PCs were conservatives. By what definition? By word and deed they were just a slightly different flavour of Liberal. Why would anyone who believed in Preston's message support a new clone of the old PC party? Why not just vote Liberal? I just don't find your arguments objective but...you are certainly entitled to your own POV. I just could never agree with you, unless alzheimer's kicks in and I totally forget any and all experiences I had with Reform.

What a perfect spark for a conspiracy theory! Despite astronomical odds (pardon the pun!) two satellites collide, like two bullets in a duel hitting head to head and fusing together. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe someone just tested a satellite-killing satellite!

Not always. lMy own experience was with the electronics manufacturing sector. So much of the assembly was done by robots that the extra labour costs were pretty well swamped out. Yet most of that industry fled the country over the last 10 years. Why? There are other things than labour that determine costs. Taxes, for one. Dollar difference, for another. China has a ridiculously low currency which it has steadfastly refused to adjust or to allow to float. Why would they? It gives them a tremendous competitive advantage. So a North American company that is profitable can become even MORE profitable by moving their production to China to take advantage of the currency difference, even if labour costs are not a factor! I find it ironic that domestic CEOs, while understanding that if domestic customers have no jobs they cannot buy their products, seem to pin their hopes on supplying China's consumer market. This is naive in the extreme. China has demonstrated repeatedly that it has absolutely no intention of allowing equal access to its own consumers. What has and will happened is that North American companies are finding themselves slowly becoming China based, with Chinese executives acquiring the reins of power. There is still a Mattel but it may be in essence "Mattel of China", with American execs phased out of their jobs.

Just give the government some revenue? Depends on how they're applied, I would think. If we had some damfool politicians impose a green tariff on a country simply for not supporting Kyoto then that would be something murky and political. Public and international support would become a dog's breakfast. I'm talking about simple unfair competition. A Canadian steel producer has certain costs that limit his ability to compete. If we have imposed laws upon him that force him to spend extra dollars to produce his product then he can only lower his price so far. Below that and he loses money. He's no longer in the game. These "green" costs are not trivial. They can add up to more than the actual profit on the end product! Why do you think that China and Russia are in absolutely no hurry to enact and ENFORCE anti-pollution laws? They COUNT on that competitive edge! A green tariff specifically and only applied to such countries and only in the amount of what it costs our players to produce should not simply end up in the government's coffers. Why would it? There is a natural patriotism to favour domestic sources. The problem is when the domestic sources have such a higher price that one just can't justify paying it. If the pricing was level then a tie would likely go to the domestic source. In many cases there might be no tie and the domestic price would be more competitive. We have some strange idea in North America that if something is out of sight and mind then it isn't happening or is not a danger, like Toronto refusing to deal with its own waste and shipping it by hundreds of truckloads daily to sites in Michigan, while turning down solutions closer and more "in the open" like that of Kirkland Lake. We INSIST that our steel plants be cleaner and totally ignore what happened with imports. We ban lead in paint on children's toys and then allow countries like China to swallow up virtually the entire market. We never bother to inspect what they ship us and then act surprised when we find out our children have been sucking on lead! Only once the problem becomes public does anyone care or any government protection agency get involved. We're so flippin' naive we accept inspection of such issues from the SOURCE as gospel! If it has an inspection stamp from the originating country we accept that as sufficient to allow it to be sold in Canada. We deserve what we get, I guess. We used to have the silliness of unilateral disarmament supporters. Now we have the silliness of unilateral "greens".

After reading 3 pages of posts I'm a bit surprised that so far there are 2 points that I thought obvious that no one mentioned. The first is, it's all very well to "Buy Domestic" but how do you get around the idea that "If you won't buy my stuff why should I buy yours?" Trade is a 2 way street. One of the problems many Canadian manufacturers have complained about for years is that countries like Japan and China cheerfully sell their stuff here but put up barriers to receiving imports from Canada. If we favour our own local stuff too much then why would we expect our export situation to get any better? The other point is that we don't seem to pay attention to whether trade is a level playing field or not. For instance, Canadian steel has to abide by anti-pollution laws that add to the end price per ton of steel. China and Russia appear to have no anti-pollution laws at all. So they automatically have a price advantage over our domestic makers. Shouldn't we impose "green" tariffs equal to the extra costs we impose on our own industries? Why is it ok for OTHER countries to pollute the earth?

Well, you say it is in both party's interests but you argue that only the Tories are really at fault! Isn't that just a wee bit partisan and not objective? I don't see why Harper would ever be so foolish as to adopt the strategy you mentioned. For Harper to be seen forcing an election at this time would be political suicide, whether the Liberals were rich or were poor. To do it and have it obvious that they had denied the Canadian people a viable alternative would have been so blatantly power grabbing that while they might have won the election today they would have gotten creamed in the next one and perhaps have been cast into the wilderness for generations! No customer likes to be forced into a rigged game that actually limits his choices. People are not so stupid that they can't eventually figure out what's going on. When they do eventually get a choice they have a tendency to take revenge. Your scenario just doesn't seem credible to me.

Well, you might be right but somehow I find it hard to believe. First of all, the old PCs might have seized control of the present CPC but there can't be that many of them. After all, Canadians had soundly rejected the old PC party to the point where it was all but extinct. It was perceived as too similar to the Liberals. Why not simply vote Liberal? You yourself have admitted that you found both Liberal and NDP to be an easier choice than the new CPC. I would think that more likely Harper would lose the next party leadership convention in favour of a strong, more Reform-minded candidate. That's assuming there's one available, of course. Harper himself has kept such an iron grip on his MPs that we haven't seen many other potential stars strut their stuff. I'm not certain that moving back to more Reform style roots would mean losing the East for the CPC. The old party had been making steady progress. It just appeared that some in the leadership got a bit impatient. They had come from nowhere to the Opposition in less than 10 years but somehow that wasn't fast enough. If it did mean that the Tories became a predominantly western party so what? What else would be new? As I had said, the Liberals are obviously an eastern-only party. Look how quickly they were willing to dump the West with their attempt at a coalition! After all these years, I'm beginning to suspect that Canada should give up the attempt at being united across the continent. If the only way you can keep people in a country is with bribery, force or negating any other choices then perhaps you don't deserve to BE a country!

Sorry, PT! That just doesn't follow. Any salesman knows that it's not enough for a customer to become dissatisfied with a particular product. You still need a strong reason for him to abandon the incumbent choice and switch to another brand. While your argument might have some merit in the East, where there is a much larger number of 'changeable voters' I very much doubt if the Liberal brand could make more than 'mice nuts' progress in Alberta. Their name has just been too badly damaged for literally generations. Moreover, they have done literally nothing to attempt to change that. No, Harper would have to take a chainsaw to a busload of nuns and orphans before Alberta would switch to the Liberals in any significant numbers. The most success, if you could call it that, is a repetition of the old Chretien days, where the Liberals only ruled in the Eastern half of the country and yet still referred to themselves as the 'only truly national party!" The arrogance of that claim was part of what fueled the growth of Reform/Alliance and further ruined Liberal candidates' hopes in the West. Essentially, the Liberals were saying that an eastern-only party could be national but a western-only party couldn't. This was the same as saying western Canadians were second class citizens. Once again Canada would be divided politically. Still, we're used to that. Maybe it's our natural state of affairs. Maybe provinces SHOULD separate! We've seemed incapable of electing governments that truly represented us from coast to coast for the last 20 years, since Mulroney's days. It will take more than making Ignatief the unelected leader of the Liberal party to cause Harper's Tories to "be on shaky ground with his base."

This thread contains some of the most twisted partisan logic I've seen in months! Let's assume that Ignatief is not a total idiot. After all, you yourself have declared yourself a supporter. Why on earth would he agree to a deal if Harper was totally in the wrong and the Liberals were totally in the right? There must have been enough to gain and enough to lose ON BOTH SIDES or they would never have mutually agreed to drop it! If Harper was the total criminal you imply it's guaranteed that the Liberals would have kept going for the jugular. You're leading with your heart and your heart clearly is against Harper. That's your right, but you have argued better about other issues. I suspect that if it wasn't for Dion the entire matter would never have lasted as long as it did. Dion was never smart enough to see if some mud might splash back on him. This ignorance forced traditional political mudslinging to often escalate into lawsuits. Very much an academic, 'professorial' attitude, I might add. Ignatief seems to have spent more time in the 'real world' and is slowly cleaning up some of the messes he's inherited. To my mind, this shows that Harper no longer gets a free ride in the leadership competition. Oh well, Ignatief so far has not given me a good reason to switch my support but still, a capable opposition can only mean that Canada will win even if the Tories lose! A liberal government led by Ignatief would be a disappointment to voters like myself. A liberal government led by DION and his 'Green Shift' would have made me fear for my children's future!

"All whites are guilty"? Well, not much room for discussion there. If I said all natives are guilty of whatever, I guess that would be racism. Apparently, only whites can be racist, if I follow your 'reasoning'. Still, that don't confront me none! You see, I don't consider myself part of a tribe. I'm an individual, responsible only for my own sins and I only take credit for my own successes. I don't speak here to ALL natives! I don't even speak to all of Six Nations. I speak only to those involved in the Caledonia protest, who have exercised certain tactics that I don't find moral. I could even support your views on the B.C. situation, at least in some part. I just can't respect many of the things that went on in Caledonia. I suspect that much of the more extreme action was done by individuals who aren't even native to Caledonia - imported protesters, if you like. They will use Caledonia as a poster child for their own cause and then move on, leaving the incumbent Six Nations people to deal with the hard feelings. ASIDE TO CHARTER.RIGHTS - You seem to often follow my posts and sometimes I see from quotes in other posts where apparently you have been posting to me. You should be aware that I have had you on 'ignore' in my control panel since at least last fall. Save your fingers.