Wild Bill

Why on earth would you cite an article that flat out supported MY side of the argument! Did you even read it?

You may be right. However, there is a cost. The support for teachers from parents has become severely strained. Somehow, I don't think attitudes like yours will help. A trend seems to have been established. More and more parents are becoming dissatisfied with both teachers and the school system in general. An eventual conflict seems inevitable.

Jacee, I just can't follow your reasoning here. The issue is murders of brides over dowries. You offer up simple murders. How many of those American murders had to do with dowries? Apples and oranges! Or is it your point that murder by an abusive husband is identical to murder over a bridal dowry? Or are you saying that "India has murders. So does America. Therefore, they must both have murders for the same reasons and culture has nothing to do with it."? India. America. Both names have some of the same letters!

I agree, Topaz. We have very poor choices. Perhaps if ALL the parties used this "time out" to pick new leaders we would be better off! Hudak is so boring he makes Steven Harper look like Iggy Pop!

Michael, your inference was quite plain. You twisted my points into a racial issue, implying that my views therefore are also racist. I found that insulting and unfair. I also think you lost track of who said what, confusing my posts with that of others. A simple apology could have corrected that but you chose to obfuscate your way out of it. I am NOT Mr. Canada! For the record, I do not believe that my views are racist in anyway at all. If anything, I find YOUR positions often to be patronizing and frankly insulting to members of minorities! However, we are all entitled to our own opinions. Which brings me to another problem. Before, whenever I found that a poster got under my skin too much, .whether from a total lack of fair-mindedness, an absence of manners or common courtesy or simply being unable or unaware of enough common knowledge to be interesting I would just add him to my 'IGNORE' list. I just got a news flash. I CAN'T add YOU, Michael! I tried but the forum software won't let me! I got a message saying that I "cannot ignore this member". I guess 'facillatators' are exempt. That's a pity. It reduces my options to trying to ignore you manually or simply leaving the board. I truly think you owe me an apology, Michael. I also truly believe that hell would freeze over first! Whatever, you are the facillatator, not me. The 'owners' of this forum chose you and therefore you are more important to them than one disgruntled member. So, I will try to ignore you 'manually'. I would appreciate it if you would share the courtesy. I find your debating postions to often be not just biased, but 'righteous', for want of a better word. Tit for tat, I suppose, since you clearly find my views to be racist. In real life I might have other options but if I wish to participate on MLW I see no other options but those I have already expressed. It's unfortunate but if we agree to ignore each other I'm sure that things will stay civil and polite. If not, since I am the one having difficulty with the situation I will of course be the one to move on and remove any reason for hard feelings.

Wow! So it was never about Michael making an unconnected and unfair inference about ME! He DID imply that my argument was racist! His defense is an obvious obfuscation. Now it seems, it is all MY fault! Unbeilevable! I'm not quitting. I just need some time to cool off. I truly feel I have been unfairly insulted. As I said, to me MLW has been showing a definite slide not just into illogical emotional thinking but outright rudeness! There's other boards where that is the norm. I don't happen to like such an environment and that's why I ended up here. Now it seems MLW may go the same way. So be it. I don't expect the world to change just for me. However, I do have to make up my own mind as to how much I care to participate. I think Michael got me confused with the posts from Mr. Canada but is not willing to admit it. I have done the same myself before but when it was pointed out I simply apologized. Whatever, when even a moderator can pull a "rabble" style stunt I find it rather disheartening. I'll be back when I cool off. However, I am seriously considering if I am finding this board fun anymore. There are no other options, it would seem. There are what I consider left or right wing fanatic and emotional boards but MLW is the best I have found for civilty so far. If that changes I guess I will have to find another interest. I don't expect MLW to be affected by my absence in anyway. There are lots of other members as active or more active than me. However, I myself might feel better! For me, that's enough!

---double post

"Based on your criteria"? Are you serious? YOU can make extrapolations on what I NEVER SAID to paint me as some kind of racist? So now I can be branded for whatever you THINK might be the logical extension of my argument! An extrapolation that is not only ridiculous but one I cannot defend. I don't KNOW when I "stopped beating my wife", Michael! This forum has gradually been drifting into "rabble" territory over the past year or so. I'm not enjoying it as much anymore. Not because of differing opinions but for lack of simple manners and fairness in debate. I don't expect MLW to change for me but I think just for my own peace of mind I will take a break for a while.

Excuse me Michael but when the hell did I ever mention black inner city people? I have no idea where that came from! Is your tinfoil hat picking up messages from space? I don't recall EVER mentioning inner city blacks! I may have slammed hiphop music a time or two. Are you on meds?

You are either very ignorant or deliberately trying to twist my words into something they are not, CC. Perhaps we should not debate for a while. I think you have a problem.

You always seem to refuse to deal with cultural clashes. You turn it into some form of racial discrimination. Why do you have to use "black inner city" as a model? It's as if you WANT it to be a conflict! No wonder social problems never seem to ever be resolved. I'm going to go make supper. Perhaps I will put on some B B King for dinner music. That man understands racial discrimination far better than you or I ever will.

As far as I know, Roma are caucasians! Essentially, they are of Punjabi stock from long ago when they migrated into Europe. Through intermarriage most today are Hungarian. Here's a link for you: http://www.chgs.umn....ti/gypsies.html "The Gypsy race originated in the northern part of India near the Punjab Region [Demand 1980:31]. They refer to themselves as Roma which has mistakenly been called a cognate for wanderer. Roma is instead derived from the word, "Rom," meaning man. The Gypsy language is called Romani and is derived from the oldest written language, Sanskrit." As to your second question, ethnicity is cultural. I have always believed that you cannot approve of a culture in toto. There are too many different cultural beliefs, customs and values for that kind of blank cheque. Some cultural traits are negative when compared with own's own culture. Do you have a bias against female circumcision? How about the suppression of women's rights? You have to pick and choose, Michael. You always have to consider such things in context. The answer to your question must always be "which specific ethnic trait do you mean?".

I always thought that race and ethnicity were two totally different things, Michael. A quick google says I'm right! http://www.diffen.co...hnicity_vs_Race "The traditional definition of race and ethnicity is related to biological and sociological factors respectively. Race refers to a person's physical appearance, such as skin color, eye color, hair color, bone/jaw structure etc. Ethnicity, on the other hand, relates to cultural factors such as nationality, culture, ancestry, language and beliefs."

Well, it always has seemed to me that those without any true talent that is popularly recognized have simply found another way to glory - and money! They form a clique of their own and generate some piece of crap that is presented as having some value that only an elite (themselves!) can appreciate. People with more money than brains can talk about it as if they actually understand it, since when there is really nothing there then anything positive can be taken at face value. Criticism can be dismissed with an ad hominem attack on the "sophistication" of the critic! It's sort of an "emperor has no clothes" thing. Everyone wants to belong to the elite that supposedly appreciates the "art". Sooner or later a mark comes along with money! Rich people have always made very good marks for this sort of thing! The artistic community always puts rich people down as "uncultured". The only way the rich mark can be classed as "cultured" is with giving money into the artistic community! So defensive and insecure rich people are fooled into spending 21 million pounds for a piece of crap that virtually never has any true value.

Still, countries like Saudi Arabia should be ashamed and treated like obvious bigots.

Well, the individual departments can become more productive, doing the same or more with fewer employees. Or, at an over-all level the government can stimulate the economy to increase business and job growth. More tax revues means government can afford to give more services. Looking back over the past few decades, it looks to me that the second point has been a miserable failure everywhere but Alberta. It often seems as if the political brain is incapable of dealing with more than one thing at a time. They can concentrate on eastern manufacturing or western resources. One or the other but never both. Mind you, McGuinty hasn't been a positive force and he is the one more directly responsible for Ontario. Except for Samsung, of course. He's been a GREAT benefit for them!

The corruption of unions in Quebec goes back generations and is common knowledge to anyone who has paid any sort of attention at all to the mainstream media. Not so much the unions themselves but rathe with Mafia style criminal control. Probably relatively few union leaders were crooked. Most likely were coerced by criminals with no aversion at all to using violence. So the result is the same but it is not necessarily the blame of the union movement, per se. Regardless of who you blame, the fact remains that in Quebec most larger unions are thoroughly corrupt. In eastern Canada, organized crime is like the Bermuda Triangle, from Montreal to Hamilton to Buffalo, NY. This has been reported time and time again by police and journalistic investigations and reports. You might source any of the books by James Dupro, an investigative journalist who has covered organized crime in Canada since the early 80's, at least.

Max, you can do better! "Don't blame me, Mom! Look at what my brother did!"

The OP sparked a memory in me that might be applicable here. There seemed to be an underlying assumption that all these groups were accurate and unbiased "sources of reason". I don't see how we can take that for granted. Perhaps Harper's government sees a problem in that area. Even what we deem as scientific groups can be biased, particularly with what are not really sciences at all. By these I mean "social sciences" that have to do more with what certain elites already believe rather than what they accurately discover. Anyhow, back in the mid-60's I was a barely a teenager. One of my neighbours was a lady very active in the NDP. She exposed me to much of their teachings and also policy decisions, as she was privy to much of them. One thing I never forgot was a strategy that was born from the limited success the NDP had been having at the polls. They were not connecting with a sufficiently large enough number of citizens to win seats. So they came up with a new strategy. They decided to concentrate their efforts and resources lower down on the political food chain. They became active at the city and town council level, the school trustees and any and all social science research groups they could find! The idea was that by working from the bottom, often in areas that were not on the radar as political, they would gradually change public values, beliefs and attitudes to those more similar to the NDP catechism! Even as such a young fellow the idea appalled me! It seemed so "1984-ish", where Orwell described how a ruling elite actually worked to change language in such a way that even contrary thoughts could not be formulated, for lack of the very words necessary to define them! It wasn't just her. I sat in on meetings of NDP party brass many times, thanks to her. In those days such meetings were often held at supporters' houses, for lack of money. I began to see that often politics could be much more of a religion to some than a true philosophy. Maybe Harper's team is giving some "push back" in some quarters. Are all these groups he cut back truly independent?

Okay, the Russians can see the Passage and are aware that we spout words about arctic soverignity. Now what? They could follow any Canadian newspaper and know that we have no year-round icebreaker capacity, no arctic bases and of our 12 frigates, only 6 are at sea at any given time because we only have the budget to fuel half the total fleet and besides, we only have enough sailors to crew that many anyway. Perhaps you know of a few nuclear powered subs or icebreakers that we have been hiding. Maybe there are some secret aircraft carriers somewhere. I dunno. You tell me!

I used to say "Every Known Joke" for phonetics but too many people thought that meant "ENJ". But we already have some threads on the poor scholastic basics among the younger generations!

I hate to sound cynical but our Navy doesn't move all that much! Frigates sit in port for lack of fuel and sufficient crew. We don't really have much in resources to be much of an espionage target. It bothers our pride to admit this but it's the truth! We're like the Scottish uncle who pretends he gives more than he does, telling us to "Come in! Warm yourself by this roaring candle!" However, the traitor's position may have granted him access to info on our NATO allies, particularly Uncle Sam and Great Britain. Which certainly won't help to improve their confidence in us!

Just fly with vacuum tubes! They are immune to an EMP! VE3EKJ since the early 70's ---- are there other hams on MLW?

Is that true, when they have consistently blocked Canadians from many International services over the years? For years we had the issue of "pirate" TV satellite dishes. Not only was it illegal to have a dish that pirated American signals for free, it was illegal for a Canadian address to subcribe and PAY for an American satellite service! Even now, there are many American and British TV online services which supply programming, usually reruns of current shows and a big library of classic tv series. Whenever I try to access or register with such a service, I get a message saying words to the effect of "Sorry! No Canadians!" Sure seems like they have been blocking and limiting my choices to me, Michael! Especially when there is no equivalent Canadian source for me to choose. If I miss an episode of NCIS, it is freely available at a network website in the USA. Here in Canada, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Global did not archive any episodes all summer. American Scifi channels have a great online library. I am blocked because I am Canadian. The scifi channel here has no such library. In effect, the CRTC blocks American competition, even when there is no Canadian supplier of the equivalent service. This is why I gave up on satellite and cable TV. I have been using an antenna for over a year. For the first time since I was a kid, I can see those great SuperBowl commercials!

I see. So in order for your premise to be correct, consumers would have to have intimate knowledge of any and all managers of any product or service they purchase. Are you living in a fantasy land? Quick, tell me who made your toilet paper! What sort of person is the company CEO? How about your toaster? What about that can of beans in your cupboard? Tell us immediately who is the head dude and what sort of person he is? It is so obvious I can't believe I have to mention it but Jaycee, NOBODY knows the answers to such questions! What's more, no doubt there are female managers that are jerks too! Nobody knows because they have no need to know. It doesn't affect their personal lives or choices. So it doesn't affect the profit or loss of any business. Only in a unique or spectacular case, such as the head of some high profile company being outed as a pedophile, would the average consumer know or care. Even then, while they may not care for that particular manager, it is doubtful still that it would change their decision to buy from that company. You are tilting at a windmill from a pinnacle of political correctness, to an empty hall! Your POV and that of the article from the OP are totally irrelevant to the profitability of any business. You might come up with some examples of true relics running companies but it wouldn't have any impact at all on their sales. I am becoming convinced that you do not live in the real world at all.