Wild Bill

August, I'm curious. Your English is so good that you could be mistaken for an anglophone with a good education. How did this happen? Did you spend much time in TROC? Perhaps you attended an anglophone university and spent a lot of time drinking beer at engineer's "boat races", if you know the colloquialism.

More revisionist nonsense! The caucuses of both the BQ and Reform use to have regularly scheduled hockey games together during the cold Ottawa winter. I rather doubt if the BQ would have participated with people that were demonizing them! Pull something else out of your butt! Should prove interesting!

Yep! You had to conclude with an "ad hominem", didn't you? If I don't want to drink the "greeen" Kool-Aid then I must be rich and evil. In reality I'm poorer than Oleg! I could make far more money on welfare if I wasn't philosophically adverse to the idea. Certainly I would qualify. I guess I must be insane! How else could you be so wrong?

This from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_River_land_dispute "Since the occupation began, many Caledonia residents have complained that they have been subject to threats and violence from Native protesters and that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) failed to take any action to protect them. David Brown, who lives with his wife near the disputed area, stated in court testimony in November 2009 that he was required to carry a native-issued passport and needed approval from the protesters to enter his own house. He also claimed that after arriving "after curfew" one day, he was denied entry and jailed by the OPP when he caused trouble by ignoring the natives. Brown alleged that Native protesters threatened and harassed him repeatedly and that rocks and mud were thrown at his family and their home. Brown and his wife are seeking $7 million dollars in a civil lawsuit against the OPP on the basis that the police did nothing to protect him and his family during the occupation.[31][32] In response to Brown's claims, Crown lawyer David Felicient stated that the situation "must be understood against the backdrop of the unique character of aboriginal occupations and protests" and that the OPP were prevented from taking action due to "policy implications."[31] Felicient also suggested that Brown had fabricated portions of his testimony to draw attention to his lawsuit. When Felicient asked why Brown kept a loaded shotgun, Brown responded that "We were doing what we had to do to stay alive. I had no protection from our government. I felt that I needed to protect my wife and my family."[33] In court testimony, OPP Inspector Brian Haggith stated that the Native protesters "set up a checkpoint... Almost like they were entering another country," and that community lost confidence in the OPP's ability to protect them. Haggith also testified that when natives set fire to a wooden bridge in town, the fire department withdrew from fighting the blaze when confronted by shouted death threats from the protesters. The fire chief told the OPP he did not believe they would protect him or his men if they went against the natives' wishes. In addition, a electrical substation was then destroyed, causing more than $1 million in damage and a blackout, when a truck crashed through its gates and was left ablaze. Once again, Haggith stated that there was little response from the police. Inspector Haggith also testified that he asked for a change in policy at a subsequent meeting he had with his OPP superiors but that his request was denied.[4]" Here's a link to a youtube clip: http://youtu.be/mLsdKJfp2Ro It shows how when townsfolk, fed up because the OPP did nothing about native blockades, tried putting up some themselves. The OPP jumped on the townsfolk with both feet! Impartial justice, indeed! A newspaper story: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/peter_worthington/2010/10/27/15855826.html "It is a horror story for ordinary people who were the victims of thuggery. But it's a greater horror story for the OPP which behaved with negligence, dereliction of duty and, yes, cowardice. Officers on the job turned a blind eye to people being beaten, homes threatened, curfews imposed, road blocks established. On occasion, the OPP even refused to come to the aid of a fellow officer being beaten. Officers who refused to intervene were only obeying orders. Where have we heard that before!" Here's an article from a law magazine: http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/helpless-tells-only-half-the-story.html?print=1&tmpl=component "Instead, Blatchford produces a damning narrative of a government and police force stunned into inaction for fear that one wrong move could trigger another Ipperwash tragedy. After an early attempt to clear the area resulting in a humiliating retreat, the provincial police force was all but paralyzed. As a result, many unfortunate residents of Caledonia — some of whom were forced to drive through occupier-run “checkpoints” to get to their own homes — were basically left to their own fates." Here's some more about Dana Chatwell/Brown: http://www.caledoniawakeupcall.com/updates/091209regional.html A simple google shows pages and pages of this! Christie Blatchford's book "Helpless" contains all kinds of eyewitness accounts, with their names so that anyone can confirm the quotes. And you say it never happened? I want some of what you're smoking!

Well, by YOUR definition I may not be sane but by any dictionary definition I would look inwards, if I were you! "A conspiracy to keep their jobs"? Followed by an implication that the oil industry is corrupt AND that the world will keep buying oil until the last of the reserves is gone, which is the only way to arrive at YOUR total! Moving to any sort of energy alternative or decrease in the world's consumption blows your "math" right out of the water. All your posts show that you divide the world into two categories, that which you believe is moral and that which isn't! Big business to you is always evil. Anything "cloaked in green" is on the side of the angels. You never seem to be objective. I've got news for you! You're in danger of winning a Darwin award! There are mistaken and even corrupt people amongst the "greens". There are decent and honorable companies out there as well. What's more, there are new technologies on the horizon which may solve many if not all of these problems. Business will make money from these new technologies. Business has no loyalty. Believe it or not, Studebaker Corp is still around and very healthy! They just haven't made cars for a long time. That "Mr.Fusion" power plant Doc put in the DeLorean may actually end up on the market. It could have a Shell logo! There is no law of the Universe that says Shell must stay forever in the oil business. Being a fanatic doesn't make you more right or "holy". It simply means you're nuts!

No apologies needed, Michael. A simple misunderstanding is all. I'm just glad my "old man's" memory is holding up! Anyhow, as I've said many times, I don't give a hoot for any consensus. Something is true or not true even if NO ONE believes it, let alone a majority. I don't accept that 90% of scientists have drunk the GW Kool-Aid either. I will believe that 99% know how to keep their mouths shut and thus their jobs, however! As for Third World salaries, I believe that to be a secondary goad to businesses. I was there in the high tech business back in the 70's. The sense I got was that American (and Canadian) business was very hide-bound. There was an incredible amount of inertia making change very difficult. Remember, it was never Timex that invented the digital watch, even though they were a huge and long-standing maker of watches. They were oblivious to the digital revolution and were shocked to find Litronix, a light emitting diode maker, had brought a digital watch onto the market and were starting to eat Timex's sales for breakfast! Also, Royal or Underwood typewriters could have been expected to be the first to bring word processors onto the market but they didn't! As Silicon Valley new companies began that wave the traditional typewriter manufacturers just dwindled out of business. So with that kind of "stick in the mud" management I would have expected our manufacturers to just go on and on doing things the same way they always had! However, the new environmental laws put them in serious jeopardy of bankruptcy! The Third World countries were totally out-competing them, since they had NONE of the "green" costs. "Green" advocates have been very poor at understanding that business can't implement green solutions for free! Western countries must have spent trillions by now, if we totaled everything up. I doubt if China, Russia or India have spent enough to buy a case of beer! Perhaps a case or two, but only recently because of political pressures. Since they now OWN the manufacturing industry they can afford to implement some token programs. In effect, the threat of bankruptcy woke our companies up and FORCED them to make decisions! As they investigated options the fact of much lower wages in the Third World certainly would have led them in that direction. My point is that if the environmental costs had never happened Western management would have stayed asleep! I've worked for some VERY big companies, Michael! I've done business with many even bigger! It all taught me that the cartoon "Dilbert" is not a comical fantasy but rather a documentary!

The pedophile remark was mine! I'm entitled to use it as often as I want. As for the sins of the federal conservatives, so what? What's your point? "Let me off the hook, Mom! After all, my brother did it too!" The Conservatives are politicians too, you know. Why do you imply that if one is wrong it should be forgiven because another politician of a different stripe also committed such a wrong? When someone calls the police and they are told "Sorry! You're on your own! We will NOT come out!" then government has totally lost the right to command respect from its citizens. Perhaps that's a significant difference between Canadians and Americans. If an American in New York read such a thing about a town in California, he would immediately get indignant! "That's un-American!" he would cry. If a Canadian reads it as happening in a Canadian community, he will say "Well, it probably didn't happen that way!" or "Those newspapers exaggerate!" or sadly and even worse yet, the implications will just soar over his head... Or worst of all: "I like natives so anything they do is right and justified and those townsfolk must have done something to ask for it!" We are never going to achieve the dream of a "Star Trek" culture where race is irrelevant as long as this sort of thing keeps happening.

Why are you missing the point? I never referred to the new Ice Age theory as accepted by the mainstream scientific community. I stated that it was an assumption shared by a large segment of scientsts but more importantly, by the mainstream media and the general population of the western world. I never said there was some consensus at an IPCC type body. That was never necessary. Just have Carl Sagan give a talk on PBS about how Man was causing a plunge into an Ice Age (Which I recall he did, one night, BTW) and more people believed it than those that heard Satanic messages when they spun their Beatles LPs backwards. You see Michael, that was a LOT of people! This was enough in itself to steer public policy, i.e. large sums of tax money and restrictions placed upon industry, which provided jobs. When I was in my teens it was the heyday of good-paying manufacturing jobs. There is an argument that it was the rise of pseudo-environmentalism in the 1970's that lad to much industry and its jobs being re-located to the Third World. The flow chart would be "America feels guilty that it is causing climate change. It begins to put anti-carbon and anti-pollution restrictions on its industry. This causes price increases in the products, making them uncompetitive against goods produced in the Third World, which didn't care about the environment and had NO restrictions on its industry! As American industry became more and more uncompetitive it began to abandon domestic manufacturing, placing its plants in those Third World countries and having only warehouses at home.Warehouses, as it is well known, contribute very little negative influences to the environment. American (or Western) environmentalists were proud of themselves for "greening" their country. Unemployed people were miserable but at least they could breath better air while their kids' stomachs were growling.

I never agreed with his politics either but that didn't matter. To me, he was a guitar player! That was enough. I will miss him!

Well, that's one lie for Tim and 10 zillion for Dalton, but who's counting? Meanwhile, after the disgusting spectacle of Dalton removing the protection of the Law from the entire Town of Caledonia I have no remaining respect for him. I'd sooner vote for a pedophile than Dalton and his crew! They have spat on the most important responsibility of government to its citizens for political purposes. They deserve only contempt! If he'd do it to Caledonia he's do it to any of us anywhere in Ontario, if it suited his purposes.

Do you really expect there to be a lot of cites from nearly 40 years ago, pre-Internet? My experience was the same as BC's and Saipan's in that the cry of triggering an Ice Age was EVERYWHERE! YOU claim that it was only a fringe idea! The only place I've heard that is from modern GW advocates that are extremely biased. The claim 100% contradicts my personal experience of that time and for that reason I consider it false! It would be on a par with me trying to convince you that you never had a childhood accident with a train, as you hop around with only one leg! Frankly, I don't think that YOU have ever effectively proven your claim that fears of Man triggering an Ice Age was just a tiny fringe view in the early 1970's! A Wiki article likely written by some young activist who wasn't even a gleam in his or her daddy's eye back in 1970 just doesn't cut it. No, you keep making the claim Michael but it's gotten to the point I truly am not going to be persuaded to your POV. Next you'll be telling me that Man never landed on the Moon or that the Beatles never existed.

Punked, your arguments have gone on for pages yet you have avoided the actual issue. Who gives a rat's ass if your argument about nitpicking details justifies Quebec perpetually having more seats? YOU care and they other posters you're arguing with care! The question is, how will voters outside of Quebec look at the NDP position? Do you really expect us to believe that some party spokesman can just slip the media a few of your arguments and there will be no negative repercussions? Horsefeathers! The average voter is going to look at Quebec retaining extra seats and take it as just pandering to Quebec, yet again! The Star can publish all the nitpicking articles they want but no one is going to believe them! What's more, by backing Quebec the NDP can't help but look like they don't care about those other province. So why don't you stop the nitpicking arguments and explain to us how their position will NOT cost the NDP votes outside of Quebec? I'd really like to hear you try!

Well, I agree with you about what they SHOULD do! However, it's pretty obvious that I'm right that they are just trying to set the Tories up! Even though it's not my point to prove, I've done some googling and I can't find a damn thing showing that the NDP and/or the Liberals have taken a clearly defined stand on the issue of banning asbestos and losing those jobs in Quebec! Lots of "proxies" in between though. Doctors organizations, the Canadian Labour Congress and other labour groups historically sympathetic to the NDP cause. Nothing at all from the usual Liberal supporters. They Toronto Star has been reporting heavily about the Tory doctor MP and the letter from the medical group. I couldn't find any mention of asbestos mines and their jobs in Quebec being in jeopardy. So unless someone has some cites to prove otherwise, I'm staking my claim on this one! It's just a cheap setup to get the Tories into hot water in Quebec, by a bunch of hypocrites in the NDP and Liberals! Now, I wonder if by the time BattleToads and Guyser jump in to accuse me of being a conservative Tory lover the Tories won't have done the exact same thing over some other issue!

Yep! I'd like a pony, while you're at it, Oleg! Any more wishes?

I could agree with you if the Liberals and the NDP had enough character to also stand up an publicly stand for the same thing! To hide behind the curtains and use proxies to try to get the CPC to take all the heat is politics at its most despicable! With all the new Quebec MPs, do you really believe that the NDP would take a stand against asbestos? In another life! This is just another one of those instances that show why I vote for who smells the least and never get a chance to vote for someone I truly approve! THEY ALL STINK! THIS SNEAKY ATTEMPT JUST PROVES IT!

Interesting how many 'techies' believe in so many of the old Reform Party principles! I think that's because if you are trained in practical disciplines you become a 'Utilitarian', appreciating things that WORK and holding those that are obvious pipedreams in contempt! Although once again I guess it depends on your REAL goal! As a wise woman once said, there are no wrong conclusions, rather you started with false premises! If your goal is to have a system controlled by parties and not citizens, I'd say its working very well...

What an obvious setup! Have a Tory MP stir up all the ruckus! Then when Quebec gets mad, she won't know she should really blame the opposition! The CPC will lose all the Quebec votes, not the NDP or Liberals! The NDP and the Liberals should do the right thing! They should publicly call for the immediate shut down of the Quebec asbestos industry, due to the dangers of the product! THEY are the ones really calling for this to be done. THEY are the ones who should stand or fall politically on the idea!

Well, that's NOT what happened or what IS happening! Neighbouring communities who have been friends with much intermarriage for well over a century now nuture distrust and resentment. If I had been that old man put into critical care forevermore I would have distrusted any native youth I saw. Unless I got to know them well the safest approach would be to avoid and distrust them. I would see them as a potential threat, unless proven wrong! That's just simple logic. It's also a very sad way to go through life! Most natives would not have committed such violence but how does an old man tell who's a threat and who isn't? Worse yet, when the state will NOT protect you, as is what happened with those citizens who called the police for help and were told the police would not protect them, that leaves only one logical alternative - protect yourself! (You could simply wait to be hurt or perhaps killed. One resident who had the temerity to publicly complain about the situation found the nuts loosened on the wheels of his wife's car, twice! Still, I think passive suicide can be discounted as not likely by most folks.) If we put citizens in the position of having vigilantism as their only option, we are asking for a serious escalation of trouble! The whole point of society is to protect citizens so that they DON"T have to take the Law into their own hands! McGuinty has screwed up this situation royally! He's taught an entire town that they cannot expect the law to protect them. He has also hurt the native protest! Harper saw the obvious - this was a golden opportunity to make the provincial Liberals look bad! Dalton bleated that the feds were supposed to come in and solve everything but McGuinty was the one who had sent in the OPP, highlighting the point that law and order were provincial responsibilities and not federal. Harper was off the hook. Settling the Six Nations claims were put on the back burner. In an ideal world Harper SHOULD have seriously negotiated with the native protesters but hey, it was politics! To expect anything else would have been naive. You made some nice suggestions, William but I'm afraid they're merely a wish list. It's a real world problem that needs a real world solution. The example shown by McGuinty will have repercussions for generations to come!

Michael, if we were sharing a quiet beer I would likely say that both generalizations are wrong. Certainly, making such generalizations is not positive at all. However, sometimes I feel I am so overwhelmed by the anti-soldier generalizations, along with those against pretty well anybody or anything that is not "progressive", which is code these days for 'leftwing' that I am prompted to strike back, out of anger and frustration. I know you prefer to believe that the world is more balanced, that the CBC is not biased, that universities are still bastions of free speech and are NOT anti-semitic in their beliefs and so on. However, my personal experience and observations disagree with you. I see patronizing examples of "progressive" arrogance almost every day! I can only stomach so much. If I enjoyed it I would simply debate with Shwa all day long! Usually I let it roll off my back but sometimes it pisses me off just a bit too much!

There is a difference. My dog is my companion. Cattle and chickens are not my companions. They are my food! Who decides the categories? For myself, I do!

Another serious question would be, do citizens trust government solutions to be necessary, positive and cost-effective? Most people are in favour of the concept of becoming more green. They just have made a value judgement of how good a vehicle of change is their government, going on past experience. "An elephant is a mouse designed by the government" is one of the kindest of folk sayings...

And you totally missed the point! I take no stand as to the validity of the Six Nations land claims. That is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. The issue is the TACTICS and TARGETS of their protests! Virtually every act of protest committed by the natives at the site hurt the townsfolk, not the politicians. They did not blow up the electricity for McGuinty's town! They did not beat up any of Harper's party but they beat up tv cameramen, old men with weak hearts and put one old guy in the hospital after whacking him more than a few times in the head with a piece of lumber, putting him into critical care. They forced people to submit to being stopped and searched before they could proceed to their homes, including body searches of young women! They did this for months! I don't care about ANYBODY'S claims! When you use innocents as cannon fodder you are a terrorist, by definition. I believe that terrorists of any stripe should be treated as rabid animals. If they had wanted to run their ATVs through McGuinty's back yard I would have kicked in a few bucks for the gas! You really should bone up more on this issue! An entire town was deprived of the rule of law. People called the police and were told "Sorry! You're on your own! But don't YOU use any violence!" This is FACT! This is a violation of the most basic responsibility of any government. Why did it happen and why is it still happening? Simply put, when McGuinty was in opposition he pilloried Mike Harris for the death of Dudley George, a native protester at the Ipperwash Incident. By the time McGuinty was through he had made it sound like Harris had personally pulled the trigger! When the Caledonia protest broke out, McGuinty was terrified that he might end up hoisted on his own petard! So he commenced a policy of appeasement, trying to ensure that the natives did not actually resort to bloodshed. Since "white folks" tend to be far less likely to resist the force of law officers, whenever push came to shove the white folks were sacrificed. You really should read Christie Blatchford's book "Helpless". She tells the entire story of the protest, from interviews from a great many of the people involved, on both sides. She freely admits she takes no stand on the issue of the native claims, confessing she isn't qualified. She simply tells us of the protest TACTICS, the actions (or inactions) of the politicians and the effects on everyone involved. For a man so strong on people's rights I can't believe you missed this one so completely, Mr. Ashley!

Not at all! It's not worth going to war over such a cultural trait. However, it DOES tell us something about who we're dealing with! It's just one more indication that these people in that part of the world are primitive barbarians. The more educated and sophisticated ones have been and are smart enough to get the hell out and emigrate to a more civilized country! Effectively, such countries are experiencing a brain drain, which only distills their character flaws to a higher level. Hillbillies used to say that a man who kicks his dog can't be trusted. It is very important that we understand these cultural differences when we deal with these people. They are NOT like Abou ben Richie Cunninghams!

You know, this article makes the claim that cruelty and hatred towards dogs is mainstream amongst Moslem people, at least among those living in those primitive, barbaric middle eastern countries. So it seems to be a rather strange lack of perspective for other posters to criticize your post because of a number of cases of cruelty in our own cultures, which are relatively rare enough as to be classed as aberrant behavior. Also, most often when these cases are discovered the perps face legal penalties. The lack of proportion seems absurd!

You know, if the Arctic ice does NOT disappear, at least to that amount, your whole argument melts! It's a pity that we'll all likely be dead before Mother Nature proves who's right and who's wrong.