Wild Bill

Perhaps you can explain to me how the Iroquois Great Law was applied to the Neutrals? I'd ask a Neutral myself but since there are none alive today after they had been slaughtered by other natives to the last woman and child... Or will you just change some oral history and claim it trumps any written records? As a sidebar, I'd be very interested if there are any unpublished polls going on about public sentiment and reaction to native claims as we see these latest more aggressive protest tactics. The natives seem to believe that governments will simply keep "caving in" more and more and that there will be only positive results from such tactics. I think they are making a naive mistake. Sooner or later governments must face their people at the polls. I suspect that popular support for Six Nations is declining rapidly. If anti-native feeling becomes strong enough it will be a factor in an election. A government doesn't care first for what is right or legal. They first care to stay in government! If it becomes a matter of giving in to native demands or winning an election the natives will lose! No politician will commit political suicide just to "do the right thing". I guess the bad feelings are going to continue on both sides forever...

The older I get the more chuckles I find with people that have no knowledge of history and think every issue is new, 'cuz it's new for them! There is a protocol for lowering the flag over a nation's capital that has been in place for generations, if not centuries. There are situations reserved for the deaths of heads of state and others for national heroes and fallen soldiers. If we had followed the Liberal proposal to lower the capital flag for each and every fallen soldier it would have been perpetually at halfmast for both the first and second World Wars. This would only have cheapened the gesture, rendering it meaningless. I find it "smarmy to the max" for the Libs to be pushing this. It is obviously cheap politics. They are the party that sent our troops into Afghanistan with old, obsolete weapons, no helicopters and arctic cammo 'cuz they had cheaped out for years and never bought them any suitable for the desert. Our troops had to improvise, with their own money! And now they are dying from IED's while traveling the roads because the Liberals canceled new helicopters after the defeat of Mulroney/Campbell and then sold the good ones we had left to the Dutch, leaving us the junky, unsafe Sea Kings. If we had proper helicopters we'd have far fewer deaths. Our NATO partners must feel very sorry for our troops. So the party that spent over a decade rolling their resources back to the level of the Boer War, sending them out on "peace-keeping" mission after mission where the insurgents invariably had better guns than our soldiers (Bosnia?), just so Chetien could score another photo op NOW HAS THE GALL to claim that they want the flag lowered on Parliament Hill because the TORIES don't have enough respect for our fallen??!! What's more important? Lowering a flag after a soldier has died or giving him the proper resources so that he has a better chance of not being killed in the first place? My heart went out to our soldiers during all those years of Liberal rule. How could one stay motivated when the Liberal government obviously was so callous and uncaring of their lives? C'est rier, n'est-ce pas?

Agreed! The cultures of those three cities are so diverse from anywhere else in Canada that they really should not only be made into provinces of their own but perhaps even separate countries! These cities call all the political shots yet have nothing in common with the rest of Canada's values and needs.

You say that as if all Dalton's previous budgets didn't indicate anything!

Ah, but you should consider that while it is true that Dalton is responsible for his province's economy when he does all the wrong things he will never take the blame. If you listen to what he's been saying these past few months Dalton has been blaming the Feds! Dalton is saying our troubles are not from having the highest business taxes anywhere in Canada OR the USA but from contributing too much to Ottawa! Flaherty has no choice but to challenge Dalton. He's just being very clumsy about it! Dalton's support comes from the big city Toronto-type cities. These areas have had a huge decline in business and jobs for a reason! They've forgotten that money must be created. They believe that if you need more money the next higher level of government is supposed to just give it to them. It's no use for Flaherty to scold them! That only works when you're preaching to those areas that aren't the problem! He should find a way to influence the 416 voter, not the 905. If Flaherty does NOT challenge Dalton he loses, plain and simple. The voters will be left with the impression that our troubles come from Flaherty being too cheap with the pork, not that Dalton is a poor pig farmer. Dalton's supporters are the type of people who think that if you don't have enough power then you should just put more outlets in your house. Or if you don't have enough bread you should open more variety stores. As I said, Flaherty must deal with them. He needs their support. He's just very clumsy about how he's doing it.

100 years ago was a completely different situation! This is the same old tired and feeble argument put forth by those who have no idea of how things are today. Whenever we criticize the present immigration system we are reminded of how immigrants built this country. That's true, they did! The best example is post WWII, when huge numbers of Europeans came to Canada in search of a new life. My father-in-law was a typical example. He and his wife came to Canada in 1950. He immediately found work in construction and within a surprisingly short time had his own crew and was a contractor who built 100's of houses. That's "apples and oranges" to what the immigration system has become! Today the majority of immigrants come here under family unification. That means mostly grandmothers and grandfathers! They tend not to go into construction. Their house building years are behind them. What's more, once the grandfolks get here they can themselves sponsor the uncles and aunts, or even the great-grandfolks if they're still living! These folks also arrive at a time in their life when they tend to cost the system more, especially in terms of health care. Meanwhile, we have only a much smaller percentage of new immigrants who are younger and get busy "building this country". The present system is completely different than the "official" presentation. We have a backlog of over 900,000 applications to come to Canada and with the present level of bureaucratic resources most of them will be dead before their paperwork can be processed! Something has to be done to streamline and modernize the system. Meanwhile, what's wrong with setting standards for new immigrants that are good for Canada? No one appointed the existing taxpayers as the caretakers of the world's grandparents. What's more, the simple math of the situation cannot be denied. If we don't change the ratio of those who will have years of working and contributing taxes to those who are older and consume taxes we'll all go broke, plain and simple! Math doesn't care how you feel about things. You either have enough money or you don't.

Did I miss something? Did someone FORCE the Chinese government to accept that waste? Did someone FORCE China to refuse to enact or enforce any anti-pollution measures? Looks to me like they couldn't start making all that money fast enough!

Well, the fact that Ontario now has the highest business taxes not just in Canada but in North America might have something to do with our situation. The only thing that mitigated the high taxes was the low dollar and now that's wiped out. When he was in opposition McGuinty voted against every single one of Harris' tax cuts. Obviously he believes that having the highest taxes is a good idea! Meanwhile his only strategy seems to be to cry for federal bailouts. He might be correct that Ontario is paying too much as a "have" province but simply cutting back on what we contribute will not increase the level of business and manufacturing. It will simply give McGuinty more money to play with for vote-grabbing programs. Perhaps he wants to give Toronto more money so they can buy those "twice as expensive" streetcars from that Thunder Bay union shop or whatever... Or am I missing something?

They won't talk peace until NATO and the US pulls out? That sounds kinda funny... First off, the US is part of Nato. Second, explain to us how that is different from saying "We won't talk peace until we've won!". After all, as soon as NATO leaves the Taliban moves back in, stuffs all the women into burkhas, takes all female children out of school, kills all the female teachers for going against their fundamentalist teachings and congratulates themselves on successfully defeating their opponents! Or are you implying that after NATO pulls out the Taliban will stay out of those areas presently in NATO hands and negotiate about returning? Or am I missing something?

I dunno if it's that simple. Harris had two HUGE majorities! It was pretty obvious that most Ontario folks were sick of the old kind of politics. One of Harris' strongest points was fiscal responsibility, an area where pretty well ALL Canadians had lost faith in politicians long ago. Harris retires but Eves was boring as lukewarm bathwater! He runs a lacklustre campaign. The Liberals get back in. First thing they do is announce that the Tory's had left a deficit of a few billion dollars. If you actually read past the intial headlines there was some controversy over how you calculated those deficits. Some folks said there was really no deficit at all. Didn't matter. Those who always hated Harris and his crew for daring to try to live within our means were determined to make sure that we never went down his path again! McGuinty got a lot of money from teachers unions and such to buy his support. So now we apparently don't have any deficit but we also find that a lot of things don't work any better. In fact, many are worse. One of our local hospitals put in a fancy new system to speed up how fast you see a triage nurse in the emergency ward. I'm sure the faster times are being trumpeted proudly somewhere! Unfortunately, this just means you gain entry to an even bigger waiting area. I took my wife there and we waited over 8 hours before she was seen. And no, it wasn't for a hangnail that could've waited! My wife is in the medical profession herself and if she decides to go to emergency it's because she HAS to go to emergency! There wasn't much any of us who had voted for Harris could do. He was gone, and his successors were kinda lame. John Tory and his ilk are all fighting for the middle. Why? Dalton's already there! What would be the difference if we replaced him, except to the poor folks in Caledonia, of course. We don't have a clear alternative. Both choices look essentially the same. If neither is appealing, why bother even voting?

At a nuts and bolts level, I'd agree that they would be more likely to eventually figure out how things work. However, the issues of what do we do as a society and what price would it cost us I agree are political. The problem is, for politicians to at least grasp the basics of the scientific argument is almost impossible these days. I doubt if very many of our MPs took hard sciences and maths even to the end of high school. You don't need to be a mechanic to drive a car but you should at least know it runs on gasoline! Right now we have politicians meddling in the science, picking and choosing which scientists support a premise the pols have already decided is true. It's public record that being a "denier" is a career limiting move if you want any grant money so you can feed your kids. Moreover, the idea of "pay anything, just in case" is not just foolish but downright dangerous! It's bad enough if we all become poor for no positive benefit but what happens if we eventually find out we should have taken another approach and we no longer have enough money or resources to make it happen? Tax money is not unlimited, after all.

+1! Politicians are simply not qualified as a rule to mess with scientific matters! A poli-sci degree is not a science degree, even if it comes from Queens or Ryerson! I mean, most of these people can't even manage their own email or wordprocessing and have to have aides to do it for them! They likely have never changed a plug on a lamp in their lives. The space under the hood of their car is a cosmic mystery. They don't understand the difference between astrology and astronomy. Politicians think consensus is as valid in science as in politics, when of course it is completely irrelevant as to truth. Witness how so many scientists in irrelevant fields have their names added to IPCC support lists, often without their knowledge! We are living in times where the average level of scientific education in our population is at an all time low. Few kids build their own radio. They play Xboxes! It is telling that in many school boards a science or math teacher has his pick of positions, due to scarcity. If he's male he can write his own ticket! I'm not saying that a science teacher is inherently more valuable to society than an English or Art teacher. It's just that things are way out of balance and the result is seen in how well society is equipped to understand scientific matters. It has been said that scientific thinking is not innate to human beings. If it's not taught before the age of 10 the child will rarely ever be able to think that way. Yet the world gets more and more complicated, as we get more and more poorly equipped to cope with it. Or to put it more scientifically, "Intelligence is a constant that is divided by the number of people in the group."

This soldier's letter should be on the front page of every newspaper in Canada! When his hitch is up I hope he could find a job teaching young folks about History & Moral Philosophy! For the first time in years I'm moved to pride in being a Canadian. Clear thinking and clear values, as opposed to the fuzzy illogic of so many yammerheads. Perhaps there's some hope after all.

Who's "We"? I don't recall ever voting Liberal! I certainly didn't vote for them to sit on their hands for over a decade until it would cost BILLIONS to live up to the promised THEY made! In fact, it was the Liberal talk of sticking to the agreement last election that made me all the more reluctant to vote for them! I would have taken no pride in sticking to such a ridiculous and harebrained scheme as Kyoto. I would have been ashamed for being a citizen of such a sucker nation!

You should read the link again! It states that within 2 years China will have gotten to the point with its polluting emissions where it totally swamps out the entire Kyoto reductions of ALL of the signing countries! In other words, it will have made all the efforts of everyone else totally a waste of time and money. And its emission curve will still be accelerating! This makes the idea of CO2 reductions not a matter of cost versus threat. It simply means that everything anyone else does is nullified by the Chinese, WHO ARE SPECIFICALLY EXEMPT FROM THE PROVISIONS OF KYOTO! Again I ask, why should the rest of us bother?

So we don't! We slap on the tariffs and we don't take them off unless and until we have reason to believe the audit process. If that means forever then so be it!

Would we really need to rely on precise audits? How about a reverse onus system? We slap on a green tariff and leave it to CHINA or whoever to prove it's not applicable? I'm not an economist but since the majority who get print these days seem all to be leftists from Queen's University I think I've a right to make suggestions and observations. A couple of years ago I heard Harper make a point that disappeared faster than a cat's duty in a litter box! He was pressing a human rights issue during a visit to China and some media type asked him if he wasn't afraid the Chinese would allow this to affect our mutual trade. Harper commented that when our trade balance with China is so incredibly out of whack in China's favour why should we care?! I thought this is a good point that I never hear mentioned, let alone considered. What's more, if China depends so much on having huge trade surpluses with western nations then they should also be incredibly vulnerable to boycotts and high tariffs. Are we not being some kind of "Lenin-esque" "useful idiot" pushovers? China is wiping out more than the entire world's Kyoto reductions and we're supposed to keep buying from them? While imposing green costs on our own industry and expecting them to be able to compete against such countries on the world stage? It just doesn't make sense!

What about "Green Tariffs", where if a country like China produces goods with the advantage of no anti-pollution costs we impose a tariff equal to what it costs our domestic industries to pay for smokestack scrubbers or whatever? Shouldn't the idea of Free Trade also mean a fair, level playing field?

Well, one thing's for sure. If you were the judge you'd have to step down for being too involved! Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in court. Libel is a criminal matter, not a political one. It's one thing to cheer for your own team. It's quite another to commit an illegal act in support of them. I heard that Dion did essentially the same thing a while ago, went to court and lost. If true, you'd think he'd learn. I hardly think that with the Liberals being so broke they could afford to pay off a libel suit. What if the court convened during the campaign? Would the Liberal lawyers try to have a secret court if the proceedings were going against them, making them look bad as we came down to the polls? This could be a lot of fun!

Well, count me out! He was too predictable. Red folks perfect, pinks all bad. Sorta like the Toronto Star with the Liberal Party. Besides, he was bounced for his bigoted language. If he can't keep from messing on the floor then he shouldn't be allowed in the house! Meanwhile, he'll probably just show up under a new alias, complaining of racism towards natives while making racist statements about "noses". Opus the Penguin would be offended by the hipocracy!

And isn't the cost of doing what they suggest too high? Who pays? How much? Can we afford it? What approach will work and what would be a waste of time? If Canada had met the Liberal Kyoto promises I guarantee that you would be thinking a Big Mac is a fancy night out! Yet if you ask these questions the only answer you got was : "Don't bother us with such details! Do as we say or we'll all fry! Everyone important agrees with us! You must be a DENIER!" Does this sound like "scientific method" to you?

Apparently, within 2 years China's greenhouse gas emissions are expected to totally swamp out the entire reductions of ALL of the other countries COMBINED! Could some Dion supporter now please explain to me why we should even bother? Here's the link: http://environment.newscientist.com/articl...ns-by-2010.html

You're quite right! I've read accounts from the 40's that show that even back then everyone knew smoking was an unhealthy habit. And it is about rebellion, particularly with teenagers but even adults can resent being nagged and forced towards quitting. I just wish that we could have smoking and non-smoking venues. As I've said before, I prefer the company of smokers. They tend to be a lot more fun and far less preachy and judgemental! The smell doesn't bother me and I've never been impressed by the science behind the claims of the dangers of passive smoke. Some of those nico-nazis are so obnoxious I swear I'd consider suicide rather than be forced to sit in their company!

Not true! Most cities here in Ontario don't allow roofs over smoking areas! And many inmates of halfway houses smoke inside them with impunity, mostly because the staff don't carry to provide their own muscle to enforce the rules. Some of those inmates are BIG! Also, just this fall it became an issue that the CBC had had smoking rooms inside their buildings all these years! The loophole was that their buildings were under federal and not provincial rule and smoking laws have all been provincial. MPs in Ottawa have no problem finding a comfortable place to smoke either! Go figure. As always, some pigs are more equal than others.

I would agree with you somewhat on these issues. GW's mistake in Iraq is that he thought it would be a pushover, which it was, but never had a clue about what to do after Saddam's regime fell! I mean, disbanding an Iraqi army of hundreds of thousands of soldiers with no jobs for them available! What were they supposed to do? Sit quietly in their homes with their families and slowly starve to death? Many of them became terrorists just for food! I think GW and his boys must have thought that the Iraqi people were all hungry to become Mr. and Mrs. Abou Ben Cleaver and clone the American Dream, complete with all the resources at hand to achieve this goal. Kinda dumb. Afghanistan however was different and totally necessary. The Taliban regime had actively fostered terrorist groups like Bin laden's. The fact that they had a horribly offensive culture towards women and education was never really important to GW. The important thing was that for the first time a fundamentalist Muslim group had made a decisive strike against America on her own soil! They had crossed the line. The American people could never allow their government to wuss out on something like this! So GW sent a strong message, good and hard. He invaded the source of the 9/11 terrorists and threw out the entire Taliban regime! Any other terrorist group in the future would have to consider such a ferocious retaliation as part of the cost of ever doing such a thing as the Towers again! This message absolutely had to have been sent. Up till then there had been smaller incidents, blowing holes in the sides of American warships, bombs in embassies and military installations and the like. The strongest retaliation had been Clinton sending a cruise missile to blow up what turned out to be an aspirin factory in the Sudan. To these terrorists America had looked like an easy target! Now they know better! Security has been tightened, making it harder for them to operate. GW tied financial and political dealings to a country's stand on terrorism, making it more costly if they wanted to support such groups. If someone hijacked a plane, never again would the pilots and passengers assume that if the hijackers demands were negotiated and met they would all get off the plane safely. They now know that they might as well fight for their lives as they are certainly likely to lose them anyway. So Bush did some things right. He just was a little dumb on following through. At least he did something. If Bin laden had brought down the CN Tower we would still be waiting to hear from a commission appointed to study if it was all a federal or a provincial matter...