Wild Bill

Realistically CC, Pakistan has a very fractured government with no unified stand on things in their region. In the real world it amounts to "Thanks for the $10 billion in aid! Keep us in the loop as to what's going on! (so we can tip off the Taliban!)".

If you truly read my posts, show me where I made the claim that it was all the fault of the unions! I DID point out that unions as a whole seemed oblivious to the competition their empployers faced but I also pointed out that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The rest of your first paragraph just agrees with what I said! As for shallow misconceptions about "of shoring", there seems to be some trouble with the phone line. Please be patient, as your call is very important to us! BTW, my name is actually Krishna Ravi Devi but I go by the name of "Walter"!

I agree with you, CC! I would also support "green" tariffs! If a ton of Canadian steel is say $40/ton more expensive than Chinese, not because China is more productive but because China doesn't spend a dime on anti-pollution measures, then we should impose a $40/ton tariff on Chinese imported steel to level the playing field! Right now countries like China, India and Russia are getting a free ride. Our governments don't seem to be willing to stand up to them! It's ridiculous! Those countries desperately need our markets. They survive on our consumption. We should use that power in our bargaining.

No, but I probably haven't made myself as clear as I should have! "Jobs are lost, and some Canadian companies do better and hire... " If it were truly a win/win, then why is our unemployment rate higher now than before? Why have incomes dropped? As for "putting it on Chretien", I'm NOT against free trade! I just don't like rigged deals! It was up to Chretien to make sure that his deal was good for Canada and not just China. It was up to Chretien to audit China and make sure they didn't renege on their part of the bargain. Yet that's exactly where he failed! Once the doors were open, China threw obstacles in the path of Canadian companies wanting to sell into China while filling our WalMarts to the roof! Michael, we don't need to nitpick all the stats. The sheer size of the trade deficit between ourselves and China is so mindboggling huge that it's obvious something was very wrong! Today it is being offset a SMALL bit by sending them resource exports but China thus keeps the real money, which is always in manufacturing and value-added. Third world countries depend on raw resources for their economies. Because there are so many of them the competition is cutthroat, which depresses prices. I would agree that Harper is more cautious about free trade deals but not against free trade in itself. It all depends on what kind of a deal and the integrity of the country you sign with. It's like making a deal with Britain or with France for agricultural products. Britain would either live up to such a deal or not sign it in the first place if they were unwilling to give up their subsidies to their farmers. France would more likely cheerfully sign an agricultural free trade deal, flood our markets with their stuff while INCREASING the subsidies to their farmers! They know full well that if they reduce the protection to their farmers they will face riots in the streets. Perhaps the biggest factor is one of approach. Chretien signed his deals with China for the photo-ops. He doesn't appear to have ever bothered to audit the deal after the signing and confront China for not living up to it. We can't blame the Chinese. If the Canadian government didn't care, why should they? All those warlord Chinese leaders want is the money! Harper appears to understand this, maybe because he was schooled as an accountant. I'm not saying he's been any more successful. It's too early to say. Certainly, while he may be helping the national economy as a whole with the Alberta oil sands he doesn't appear to have done much for Ontario's manufacturing industry. To be fair, I'm not sure what he COULD do! Also, it's more McGuinty's job anyway. McGuinty doesn't have much rapport with Harper's government. All he seems to do is sit there and demand federal money! With no strings attached, of course! Hope that makes my position a bit clearer, Michael!

Here's a link to an item that was on my homepage news this morning: http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/canada/clement_denies_new_g8_fund_accusations_from_ndp/125755e4 "Treasury Board President Tony Clement maintains that he only had a "recommendation role" in the process for approving G8 legacy fund projects, despite new accusations that suggest otherwise from the official Opposition." "NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice told question period in the House of Commons Wednesday the new documents suggest Clement wasn't being truthful when he testified about his involvement in the fund to two Commons committees." I'm starting to waver on this one. At first I thought it was just the usual political mudslinging, which I suppose it still is! However, there's a LOT of smoke here! Perhaps there IS a fire! Lord knows the NDP would dearly love to pin something on their hated Tories. They tend to stretch the slightest hint of something negative against their political opponents into crimes against the Universe! Still, could it be that after all this "crying wolf" there's actually a wolf there? To me, "crying wolf" has always meant next to zero credibility but I can't deny that there is always a faint possibility of a valid warning. The problem is that after countless times of getting all worked up for nothing frustration sets in and you just ignore the mouthy little beggar doing all the shouting. Also, the NDP might want to be very careful on this one. The folks in the areas who got federal money would be very grateful. They might not like some party saying that either they didn't deserve it or that it would be impossible for them to get more for another event in the future. Shutting down all those canoe museums in Shawinigan would not have been a smart way to entice voters away from Jean Chretien! Voters LIKE their pork and WILL vote for those who get it for them! Historically, the NDP has never been in a position to claim any pork at all. This time might be different so I'm going to pay a bit more attention. As the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day!

So Canada went in to ensure ITALY'S supply of oil?

Which is why I'm still pissed at the Liberals! Chretien and his boys were falling all over themselves to set up trade with China. Worse yet, they got snookered! It all started in the early 1990's when the Mulroney/Campbell government got defeated by Jean and his boys. Working for a supplier in the electronics parts industry gave me a clear perspective of what was going on. Chretien goes to China. Next thing you know its in all the media that Northern Telecom is going to sell China a zillion phones! China was basically a primitive country and needed to be wired from scratch, to service a zillion people! Northern Telecom's stock went through the roof. Chretien and his Liberals held photo op after photo op at manufacturing plants in Kanata and Mississauga. Everyone expected there would be a lot of new hires. Meanwhile, China held talks with Northern Telecom and insisted that she had no desire to simply buy the phones and switching systems from plants in Canada. Instead, she wanted Northern Telecom to build the factories in China, training Chinese people and giving them the jobs! That of course is what actually happened. The first step was to move the production and start laying off Canadian Northern Telecom workers. The engineering stayed here but surprise! they soon found that none of us suppliers were willing to help their engineers with data and samples of new-fangled integrated circuits and stuff when the production buys would be done by China and we would thus never have a chance to bid on the production quantities! So engineering eventually moved as well. It took a while for the domestic stock market to wise up but we all saw the Big Fall where NT's stock dropped from over $200 per share to less than a dollar! Everything really went for a dump just after 9/1/11. NT had been buying over a third of ALL the electronic parts that were soldered on circuit boards in Canada! When that disappeared suppliers and sales rep houses began to drop like flies. Thousands of inside and outside sales staff, warehouse workers and the like lost their jobs, including me! The Canadian electronic manufacturing industry never did recover. The jobs never came back. Production for all manufacturing, not just for Northern Telecom also drifted away to China and also a large part to Ireland, not so much for cheaper labour as for MUCH less government paperwork aggravation! Labour was never as big a deal as many ill-informed observers thought since most of such manufacturing was done by machines anyway. So for a decade of power Chretien traded away an entire Canadian industry and perhaps 40,000 jobs that worked in and supported it! I've never been able to decide if Chretien and his people were stupid and rooked by the Chinese or if they knew all along and just didn't care. Likely they believed a popular myth of that time, that Chinese workers were unskilled grunts who would take the "joe jobs" while Canada would retain the "brain work" with engineers and better educated technicians. This of course was a very arrogant, patronizing and completely wrong assumption! China had well trained and educated workers and as she created a new industry for herself she produced many more of them! From the seeds of factories producing phones grew factory after factory producing every kind of electronic consumer device you could think of! Virtually ALL of it comes from China now, including everything in the computer you are using to read this post. Yet few know the score and even fewer care! Early in Harper's term he tried to link trade with China to human rights and the left and even much of the right went livid! "Don't rock the boat! We need their trade!" With such a staggering imbalance of trade between China and Canada why on earth would we care?

It's not that simple, Jack. I don't think the unions were consciously greedy. I just think they didn't see the big picture. Any smart salesman knows that if you get your customer to pay you more than he can afford there is the risk that he will go bankrupt. When production first started to move out the companies that were left were faced with a big problem. Stuff coming from places like China was SO much cheaper than what they could produce here that they simply could not compete! So what were they supposed to do? Stay here until they went bankrupt? To expect that would be stupid. No one will willingly commit suicide just to keep someone else happy, especially when after they're dead the happiness will end anyway. Their choice was simple. Follow the crowd or lie down and die. Most chose to follow the crowd to China and those others similar countries. In the early 80's the boss of the electronic company I worked for saw this coming. He went on a tour of Hong Kong, which was as close to China as a westerner could get in those days. He saw so many of the standard items we sold everyday, like switches, relays, terminal blocks and so on that were as much as 30% of what we had been paying to our domestic suppliers! He set up accounts and we started buying from those Hong Kong suppliers but it was too late by then to save the domestic manufacturers collective asses. Remember Jack that all the businesses in the country aren't run by the same brain! Each one is different, looking out for its own needs. I do blame the unions in that I've never heard of one that recognized the situation their opponent company was in. They seemed to think that all they had to do was to win the battle against their company's management, while oblivious to the fact that their company was going to lose the war by not being able to compete against the Chinese. It's all very well for a Ford union negotiator to say that his workers' productivity is better than that of GM. Who gives a crap if everybody is buying Toyotas? However, the union position didn't matter anyway. They could not have given enough concessions to leave their workers with a living wage that would have enabled their companies to keep production here and compete. The Chinese were just that much cheaper! Mind you, there are many things our own politicians could have done that might have helped. They've never stood up to China for many of its unfair trade practices. China cheerfully ignores intellectual property rights, selling pirate copies of not just DVDs and such but almost everything you can imagine! Worst of all, their labour cost advantage is far greater than it should be, since China artificially pegs its currency to a level in favour of its exports. Western countries should have placed an embargo on Chines goods until they allowed their currency to float freely, the same as every other country does! If this was done a good portion of the lost manufacturing could come back and be competitive, especially when you're saving shipping costs. It wasn't just a "maniacal search for profit", Jack! For most of the industries involved, it was simple survival! Or are you going to tell me that companies could have just ignored the Chinese and kept plugging along, charging the same prices and paying the same wages? Frankly Jack, if you had been running one of those companies in the late 80's you would have had to do the same thing yourself! If you have an alternate solution that would have worked I'd love to hear it!

Seems this thread is full of posts about how "trickle down economics hasn't worked", "Free Trade hasn't worked" and of course "It's all Harper's fault!" which implies that things were just peachy before Harper was elected. I'm wondering if this is all untrue. Perhaps they HAVE worked except there's a factor so big that it masks out all the others and makes their beneficial effects trivial. I'm talking about the massive shift in production and jobs to countries like China and India! We're talking more than a few million jobs in Canada and at least 10 times that in the USA. Manufacturing jobs tended to be among the higher paid in North America. Remove them and people's median wage falls like a rock. I think the politicians MUST have studied this, at least those on the higher levels and certainly those in the Finance ministry. Perhaps the hit from losing all those jobs has hurt so deeply that we're essentially screwed for a generation or two, if not longer. If this is so it's a lead pipe cinch that the LAST thing they want to do is talk about it! For such a factor at this point would be beyond their control. Voters would not believe that, of course. So there's no way an incumbent party could do anything significant about it. Opposition parties would be afraid to use it as a tool to help oust them and get themselves into power, except they likely know full well that they can't do a damn thing any better and they'd only end up suffering the same fate the next election. Or perhaps once again I'm just too cynical? As Mike Meyers mother-in-law used to say: "Talk amongst yourselves!"

well, it doesn't matter to me if someone feels they are engaged in a revolution. To me that's not an excuse. I try not to inconvenience others. I expect the same in return. If someone does something to me I don't care why he did it. I take his action as reason to retaliate in kind. Not that I seek confrontation. My first impulse if some protester blocked my path or access would be to go around him. If that wasn't possible I would then size him up as to how strong he seemed. If he looked like he could clean my clock I would just gnash my teeth and steam until it was over. If I thought I could take him I might try to provoke him into touching me, whereupon I could claim assault and legally defend myself. I truly find forcing a fellow citizen to listen or put up with such things to be the height of arrogance! If ordinary people started pushing back it would make some folks a lot more courteous!

Depends on HOW they protest, I guess! I have no problem with someone standing there or walking around with a sign. I can pay attention or ignore them at my whim. What DOES infuriate me is someone forcing me to take part in their protest! Whether it's stopping me and forcing me to wait for an "information picket", disrupting the process in a store so that I have to wait longer to get the hell out of there or generally trying to FORCE me to listen to their message is enough for me to get angry and resentful. I mean, even those religious folks waking me up knocking early Saturday morning will stop if I don't answer, or leave when I tell them politely I'm not interested. Every one is entitled to their own beliefs and views but I don't believe they have the right to be pushy about it. It's easy for them to claim that it's only a little of my time and/or it's for a good cause. Screw that! I decide for myself what's important. I don't need some pimple-faced know it all adolescent OCCUPY fascist deciding what's good for me. I have enough problems with the damn government doing that sort of thing without having to take it from fellow citizens! :angry: Some of these protesters should be more respectful of the rights of others not to be bothered. If they don't learn to do that they make get some unfortunate reactions they didn't expect.

Thanks Wilber! I learned something! That could indeed change things. I sincerely hope it would deter those Iranian wingnut mullahs!

We may have gotten off to a rocky start but Canada and America have had such an outstanding history of being friends and allies that I seriously doubt if anything could shake it. We've had disagreements of course. Brothers always do. There have been, are and will be areas of conflicting interests. There are no other countries in the world that share such a long, undefended border. There are no other countries with such integrated economies. There are always yammerheads that slam Uncle Sam because he's not leftwing enough for their liking. They are frustrated because theirs has always been a minority view. The true feeling of Canadians towards Americans has been shown in incidents like the American hostages in Iran during their religious revolution after the fall of the Shah being sheltered and smuggled out by Canadian embassy workers. Or even more clearly, by the people of Gander, Newfoundland who when hundreds of American commercial flights were grounded there during the 9/1/11 crisis, took the passengers into their homes to feed, shelter and even cloth them! Show me ANY Arab country that has done the same for the displaced Palestinians! All they've ever done is give them money and ammunition for terrorism against Israel and its allies. I think it far more likely that some day we will unite! In one of Richard Rohmer's books he made the claim that when the first Articles of Nationhood were drawn up after the American Revolution, where the formulae for defining and accepting new states were drawn up, there was a paragraph or two that specifically left a door open for Canada to join the Union, with a minimum of fuss. I've always wondered if this was fact or fiction, particularly when Rohmer's books were always fiction based on established fact. Perhaps one of our American members knows or can find out for us.

And that's all the national anthem is to you? A song? I'm afraid we don't share the same values.

How do you know this was a minority view, Michael? You keep saying that, which directly contradicts my own personal experience having grown up in those times, yet you've never given me anything to prove it! Newsweek may have been a layman's magazine but the article cites sources like the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Columbia University, University of Wisconsin - Michael, these are reputable scientific sources, not quotes from the National Inquirer! I would think that these sources support my own experience of the mood of those times. You blew me off for citing Omni magazine, despite the original sources. Now you're blowing off Newsweek and there by extension those reputable sources contained within the article! Or am I mistaken and the sources referenced in Newsweek well-known popular hacks? Is the National Academy of Sciences really a front for the Advancement of Astrology?

Sorry! I didn't know that these specific Quebec MPs had speech impediments, laryngitis, coughs and sore throats! Obviously I must forgive them.

This is a good point Manny but I'm not so sure the French version has been changed as often as the English one. I do agree that the English one has brought confusion upon itself. It's all very well to expect a citizen to make the effort but for some of us older folks who have been busy living our lives we may not even have known there WERE changes! There's not nearly as many opportunities to sing the anthem in public anymore.There was a time when the audience sang before every movie in a theatre. Still, those Quebec MPs seemed fairly young to me. Certainly not as old as the folks I'm talking about. I don't believe there have been many changes in their lifetime! So they have no excuse! I will confess, their ignorance is not that big a deal in itself. They are politicians, after all. I started this thread mainly to illustrate the hypocracy of many NDP supporters, who would forgive their own for not knowing the time of day while expecting Tory MPs to know off the top of their head the frequency of radio emissions from the star Regulus!

Topaz, every Canadian should know the anthem in either English or French. However, if you're an MP, supposedly representing ordinary citizens in Parliament, it is really lame if you don't even know our anthem in your own language! These were french MPs and they didn't know the anthem in french! How on earth can you excuse them? If they were Anglo Tory MPs you would have wanted to hang them!

Well, when you make a blanket declaration with nothing to back it up, after others have presented a lot of evidence, what should we think?

Hey, I don't bother to remember if any of them are ministers of this or that, at least, not all the time. They're just figureheads anyway so what does it matter? Most of the time the actual crafter of a new program is some civil serpent advisor. You might want to google about who REALLY crafted and implemented our national health care system! You could start here: http://www.canada.com/news/Former+Liberal+mandarin+Kent+dies/5722174/story.html Oddly enough it was another Kent, Tom Kent who was a powerful aide to the Liberals of the Pearson era and later. Pearson took the credit of course but it was Kent who had the idea, did all the work and pushed it through.

It's just not that simple, I'm afraid. First off, Iran would not likely attack America. They would nuke Israel! One missile with a fair sized nuke and Israel is GONE! No retaliatory strike, no nuthin'! True, it would also decimate the Palestinians but since when has Iran or any other Arab country done anything significant for them anyway, except give them weapons to attack Israel. Then what? Who is going to retaliate and nuke Iran? Not Russia or China! They have too much money invested in that country. That leaves France, Britain and the USA. Would they want to take the responsibility for killing perhaps millions of Iranian citizens who had no part in the decision of their rulers? After all, it's not as if Iran holds free elections. No, retaliatory nukes are not very likely. It is more probable that another UN military coalition would invade Iran to force a regime change and throw the ayatollahs out, as they did with Saddam in Iraq. To the ayatollahs, this would be a cheap price! They take the long view. In 20 or 40 years politics can change greatly and so would the world's political priorities. They might well regain power! So to wipe Israel from the face of the earth the ayatollahs ruling Iran would have to trade significant damage and possible but not necessarily permanent ouster. Some of their own spokespeople have already floated this idea as well worth it! Second, in that area of the world it would be very easy to stage a fake coup and have a phony group seize control of the nukes. They fire a few missiles at Israel and accomplish their long desired goal. Afterwards, the Iranian government denounces them as madmen and denies any complicity. What would America and perhaps other western countries do in that scenario? There are lots of other possibilities but I'm sure you get the idea. Most of all, however, we haven't even touched on perhaps the most important factor - who would be the American president in office during such a crisis? We already saw the differences between Clinton and both Bushes in handling terrorist attacks on the USA. Obama is quite different than George W. If you were one of those Ayatollahs, which president would you want to face in such a situation?

We've had a thread about a Tory MP not knowing the science behind Ozone and the Ozone Layer. It seems with some MPs in Opposition we have an even more basic problem - they don't even know the national anthem, in English OR French! Here's the link: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Politics/20111123/ndp-mps-sing-the-national-anthem-111123/ "Video of two New Democrat MPs apparently needing to consult a lyrics sheet for O Canada has raised a lot of eyebrows, and triggered a backlash from NDP members." "The NDP's national director said not every MP knows the anthem in Canada's two official languages, but St-Denis and Sellah appear to consult the lyrics sheet for both." I realize that many Quebec NDP MPs are new but I didn't realize they were THAT new! Perhaps they were former separatistes. Whatever! They'll still get their $154,000 per yr pay.

It's always been that way with cops, CC! They aren't hired for intelligence and a university education. It's more important that they are physically powerful and will follow orders. After all, if they were well educated as well as exceptionally physically fit they would be working for the Mossad, or be special forces officers in the military. I'm not saying that cops are stupid! Just that smarts are not the main hiring qualification. In fact, if a candidate is TOO smart he will likely be rejected! That happened to my own brother. From his size and exceptional physique everyone thought he was a shoe-in. After he was rejected with no real explanation some friends on the inside found out the real reason for us. So if a cop is really smart he will not flaunt it and just keep his head low long enough to acquire sufficient seniority that he doesn't have to worry about his pension. Some of my relatives wear the blue and have told me horror stories about some of their compadres! The public is never told. These guys just get a quick transfer to Moosonee! I've been told that there is more commonality than difference between many cops and the perps they handle.

However, no conclusive evidence was presented by Georgia or its Western supporters that Russia was invading the country before the Georgian attack, according to the New York Times.[124] Instead, "the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on 7 August with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm".[115][124] Georgia's claim to be responding to a premeditated Russian assault received little support from the US and NATO.[142] Here is what an inter national fact finding mission found out Well Army Guy, by now you've seen his answer. It looks like your wasting your time. He never answered any of your arguments or explained any of your evidence. He just kept frantically throwing more incorrect propaganda at you. When you had him in a corner, he refused to listen to you anymore! He's not operating on considered opinion, only faith, or perhaps more accurately "preconceived notions", which is only a polite way of saying prejudiced. It's your time and energy. I've already decided to put mine to better use.

You know, sometimes you're about as focused as a fart in a mitt! The OP was about gathering intelligence against possible threats. Now apparently it's about police acting under a phony law and faking a riot. Also, it seems, about me being happy about that! Why on earth would you assume that just because I consider keeping tabs on potential security risks I would support those phony police actions? That's apples and oranges! Can't you tell the difference? Or maybe there's no contradiction, if we keep in mind that you see people in straw man caricatures, according to your prejudices. For the record, I thought from the first that McGuinty was totally wrong trying to use a fake law. Lord knows there are enough real ones! He was trying for a blank cheque, one that he and no government ever deserves. I did think that the protesters weren't the brightest lights on the Christmas tree but I supported their right to believe any cockamamie thing they wanted! I also supported their right to protest, although I also believe that when it goes too far into looting they should be subject to capital punishment! PEACEFUL PROTEST was their right! As long as they didn't commit any crime while protesting then they should have been left alone. A shopkeeper shouldn't lose money to feed his kids just so that some protester can have a flat screen TV. That's also not to say it was only common sense to keep an eye on them and the cops handy, in case the lougans hiding within the larger crowd got out of hand. Although they were McGuinty's police I've no doubt that Tony Clement of the feds was involved. I have a good opinion of Tony, having met the man personally some years ago. That being said, I think he doesn't have the right to dodge any questions or responsibility. If there's enough smoke to justify an inquiry then one should be held, the same as for any other member. As for police faking a riot, I have no blanket confidence in the Ontario police since Caledonia. Anything that was run by Julian Fantino is suspect, by my lights. That includes the Tory ministry he now occupies. I hope you're not too disappointed with that, to coin a phrase.