Wild Bill

You are twisting my example. Many newspaper and tv reports stated that the non-violent protesters ACTIVELY helped to screen a smaller group of violent protesters with their bodies! Sorry. It happened. It was witnessed by many and is an established fact. You'll have to come up with some other lame excuse.

I read your link. First off, it was an opinion piece by a newspaper reporter. Second, while it does say that some Jewish groups claim credit for the idea of multi-cult and other such groups supported it, so what? Somebody had to invent the idea! It was still the Liberal Party that went "gung ho" with the idea. And MILLIONS of different individuals and groups supported the idea! You can't tie this specifically to the Jews! I'll bet most of those supporters also used aspirin. Are you going to thus tie aspirin use to race? And how on earth is culture racial? I notice you gave no cite or argument of any kind for that statement! Anyone who has met adopted children of different race to their adoptive parents knows within a few minutes that your premise is a crock! If YOU were adopted as a baby by Somalis and raised in their country YOUR culture would be their culture, your race not withstanding. You argue like a Jehovah Witness. You have already decided what you believe and will only consider evidence that supports your assumption. Since that's the case, why on earth should I or anyone else accept YOUR purported evidence or arguement? We know what you believe before you even open your mouth!

You know, I heard that May really wanted to be a scientist in school but unfortunately in science class her beans, stuffed in a jar of wet toilet paper, died almost immediately after sprouting. This derailed her scientific education and she was never able to get it back on track.

Yeah, yeah. We know. Only the rich are criminals! Guilt or innocence is determined by the class you're in. This is usually where I insert a clip of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where Arthur is arguing politics with a bunch of leftwing peasants who are piling up mud but I'm just too tired at the moment.

I have mixed feelings about this issue. On one hand, I do support rights under our Constitution. However, often protesters like those at the G20 seem to be taking advantage of such rights. It was reported that several times during the G20 demonstrations militant and violent protesters would be concealed behind a wall of peaceful protesters, in order to change their clothing to make it harder for the police to find and/or identify them. This was clearly "aiding and abetting". For those more peaceful protesters to claim they had nothing to do with the violence was obviously an out and out lie and the purest hypocrisy, at least for some. There are always those who will take advantage of the rules, particularly as to how their opponents abide by them. It's like if you know your opponent will always "turn the other cheek" then you can get away with repeatedly kicking him in the ass! There is a difference between respecting a protester's rights and allowing him to take Canada for a ride...

Balderdash! You are either very young or have been living in some other country! OFFICIAL multiculturalism was a Liberal Party invention back in the 70's. It was a way to suck votes from new immigrants by pretending that they would not have to integrate into Canadian mainstream society. The Liberals gave a lot of cheques to ethnic community centres and got a lot of photo ops. Meanwhile, the idea never did work out quite like the Liberals expected. It did work a bit for the first decade or so but the kids seem to integrate on their own, no matter what the parents want them to do. After all, to a kid home is where he grew up, not some mythical land his dad talks about. Blue jeans, rock and roll and now hiphop are more important to younger people. As well, as the parents gradually learned more and more about Canadian society they began to see for themselves which parties actually were a better fit to their own values, rather than just swallowing the Liberal Kool-Aid that only the Liberal Party cared about immigrants! There's no way Harper could have won such a majority without immigrant support. If official multiculturalism were a Jewish invention, it's surprising how many Muslims they allowed into Canada! This whole thread has a gaping hole in its premise anyway. As many of us have agreed before, race is truly irrelevant. Culture is far more important to what defines us as a people. Multi-cult has been slowly fading into a mere heritage thing for some time now. If and when whites become a racial minority, no one will care! Race will be far less important and most of us will be sharing a common culture. That culture will probably be very much like the mainstream culture we have right now, due to its size and longtime legacy. Sorry to disappoint you , Dissenter, but you may very well end up the only one left in the country who cares a whit about this issue!

Wyly, have you not been reading the posts? Your experiences are merely anecdotal and thus untrue. Meanwhile, you should move to Shwa's neighbourhood!

Sorry Scotty but reliable authorities on this board have explained that what you remember is merely anecdotal. This means that if THEY remember it it's gospel but if you or I remember it it never really happened!

Oh, you're talking football and the Lions. Until I read " mid 50's" instead of "mid 60's" I thought you were talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs!

Better yet, take it to a Tory MP, like Tony Clement. He and Harper's government have been strong on truth in product labeling and have been responsible for many new laws forcing what info appears on the side of your can of beans or package of corn. They think it's important to let people know where their food comes from, in order to make an informed choice.

Because he cited oranges to apples, that's why! My model was used to support my point, which was that those old enough to be Boomers experienced a different situation with crime and police response today than when they were young. In effect, they lived through a decline and were thus holding a perception that the slope has been negative. I implied this was a widespread experience which might account for the attitudes towards the system "being soft on crime". Shwa comes back and basically states "Well, things are great TODAY in MY neighbourhood! You must either live in a hole and should move or perhaps you and your neighbours are just too lazy to support programs like Neighbourhood Watch! You obviously don't appreciate the efforts of the police!" Please note that I deliberately framed the above quote in what I view as Shwa's own style. What the hell does that prove? Of course statistically there has to be some areas that have good police responses. Just because things are great in Shwa's neighbourhood how does that relate to any other neighbourhood in Canada? Moreover, just because things are great there TODAY what has that to do with whether things are better or worse than 40 years ago? Are we being better served for our taxes today or worse? Lastly, what has it to do with my point that this is a PERCEPTION among Boomers? I could have understood if Shwa had argued that my claim of such a perception was untrue, that Boomers do NOT believe this! I could have understood if Shwa had taken the position that Boomers as a group do NOT support efforts like Harpers to crack down on crime. I didn't get any such response. All I got was "Things are great in my neighbourhood! You should move!" Higher standards, indeed. He does this all the time. Instead of addressing the points he pokes fun at the model, sliding the issue into a different area in order to set his opponent up to look ridiculous, as an ad hominem attack on his argument. Like I said, it sounds exactly like what one might expect from a lawyer in court, where anything goes and who cares about the truth, especially if your client is guilty! I'm convinced that if we were all in a lifeboat and someone said the boat had a bad leak Shwa would think that if he could ridicule and thus defeat the man's argument knowing how to swim would not only be unnecessary but irrelevant.

Now who submits circular arguments! "In my opinion, your argument is absurd. How shall I prove this? I will poke fun at your position. This will show it's absurd." That only hangs together if one accepts your opinion as an actual fact. It's easy to see how you define "opinion". Again, if I ever needed an advocate I would appreciate your services. If I ever faced you as a judge whether guilty or innocent I would just hang myself beforehand to save time and effort.

Once again, you make fun of my model and ignore my points. You know, it seems obvious that you're a lawyer, or at least well plugged into the legal system. You seem exceedingly well versed in being an advocate and totally inept at the skills necessary to be a judge. I say this because what you have done here is a standard tactic for you. "Winning" is more important than arriving at the truth. JMHO

Well, what have we here? A self-appointed policeman as to whether or not posters are misleading! Rather arrogant, don't you think? Hell, we no longer need moderators. We've got you!

That's one POV. Some of us have another. Personally, I like to think that it would be an opportunity to leave the planet to all the people who think they know how to run it. Meanwhile, the rest of us could cheerfully stop offending them by contradicting their ideas and simply leave! It would just be the next step in Darwinism, Oleg! Most folks don't want you to give them a solution for their troubles. They already have some cockamamie idea, like socialism, that can't possibly work but if you're going to offer a solution it had better be one that fits their preconceived notions! I swear that too many people really want power more than food! And when their screwy ideas won't work they will seek to make slaves of those who are more practical. Stalinist Russia was a good example. If Atlas is just a greedy bastard then who needs him? Let him go and save the trouble! If one truly believes in freedom why on earth would you object to people having a chance to leave?

Exactly! It seems to be human nature that youth accepts their own situation as the universal norm. A sense of history is something that must be learned and acquired. It does not come naturally. Politicians of course love this! If they can postpone and obfuscate about an issue long enough, the people old enough to have seen things better will die off! Younger folks will have no sense that things have deteriorated, since they didn't personally experience it. I have a suspicion that this is exactly what is going on with health care today. Wait times and a lack of a family doctor are a result of not enough resources to address the needs of the Boomer demographic. If the "system" can stall for 15-20 years the problem will begin to fix itself, as Boomers die off and the population level falls. What both frustrates me and amuses me at the same time is how some posters here will try to deny an older person's direct personal experience, blow it off as merely anecdotal or even attribute it to False Memory Syndrome! You'd almost swear they were working in some politician's PR office! Either that or they believe that their own personal experience has been the way things have always been and will ever be!

How is this relevant? Your experience is different from that of others. Is your city the only place with good police response? Or just your neighbourhood? I wouldn't want to move if I didn't have these things nailed down. Besides, my business is based here. It would be a financial hardship to move, especially when I have only your word for it that things would be better. A better question might be, is your experience typical of most if not all neighbourhoods in Canada? Or is mine? I'm sure our politicians and police would all be more than willing to provide us with that information. Still, this is all moot. It doesn't matter if you or I agree. What matters is the perception of the large demographic made up of Boomers, which I think I've described rather accurately. As I said, you don't have to change my mind. You have to change an appreciable number of theirs.

This is not a perception issue, per se. It is more of an opinion, formed by direct experience. To a Boomer, what he experienced as to petty crime when he was young is much different than today. It is a FACT that cops used to come out for home burglaries and often solved them. It is also a fact that today they don't even come out, let alone make an investigation. No perception involved here. What you would have to do is to change a Boomer's value judgement about petty crime! In other words, convince him that when his home is burgled the cops not coming out is indeed a trivial thing. His perception has been formed by his values. To change his perception you must first change those values. This might be a difficult thing to accomplish. I'd rather it were your task than mine.

When I was a kid, I took it for granted that when I grew up there was a chance I could get a job working on the Moon! I guess it's going to take another century or two. NASA no doubt still hasn't finished all its "weightlessness experiments" and Obama has made America's vision (or lack of it) quite obvious. Maybe my children will achieve my dream, after getting a job with an Indian or a Chinese company...

As one of those Boomers, I should point out that it is easy to see how we get the perception that the system has gotten progressively softer on crime. When I was a lad, our home got burgled. Cops came out, did an investigation and made a report. Within a few days they caught some young men and charged them with a number of such crimes in the neighbourhood. From what I remember they received a few months of jail time. We never had another incident. Years later, my car was burgled overnight in my driveway. This was the mid 80's. An officer came out, made a report and gave me a report number to give my insurance company. I never heard or saw anything about the incident again. In the 90's, our home was broken into and we were robbed. No cop came out. We just got a report number over the phone! Over the next few months we heard from talking with our neighbours that there was a raft of burglaries going on. The kids from the local elementary school all knew who was doing it. There was a young lad "with problems" doing the crimes, basically just "smash and grabs" by breaking down a door, racing through the house checking bedrooms for jewelry and taking only such, along with any loose cash and anything small enough to be easily carried. One old woman lost $20,000 of jewelry, which was never recovered. Insured, fortunately, but that doesn't cover the emotional and sentimental portion of the losses. Ironically, this young JD committed most of his crimes on the days he was expelled from school! Anyhow, eventually we all decided as a group to start bugging the hell out of the police and our local councilor until they couldn't stand it anymore and finally starting patrolling the neighbourhood. They caught the little bugger. He received additional probation to the probation he was already serving! When we in the neighbourhood heard that a number of us went out and got big dogs. There seems to be a cultural difference here between the generations. To Boomers, home breakins are serious crimes. To the modern generation, they are trivial and not worth any effort. I realize that as a society we have only so much resources to spend and that high dollar frauds and crimes of assault and violence should take priority. I'm simply putting this forward as a possible factor in why there is a perception that the system is soft on crime. The average person, especially a Boomer, doesn't make fine distinctions in what he perceives. To him or her, it's all part of a general perception, fueled by direct personal experience with petty crime that becomes associated with all crime in general.

I was speaking from my own direct personal experience. I will allow there is some physical component but I stand by my point that most of it is simply rationalizing and mind games used as excuses to not buckle down and do it! I suspect that what organizations like those in your links are really trying to establish is "you can't do it without US!" Everything has to be certified and accredited these days. No one seems to have the initiative to just learn or do something on their own. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that few people buy any textbooks in their lives once they leave school! They simply stop learning or doing anything on their own.

Great game that, TiCats vs. Lions, eh?

Not much? How about one or two atoms per square metre? If that's not "mice nuts" I don't know what is! You'd be measuring the effects of drag over billions of years!

They blocked the shipment for no good technical reason at all! They are obviously totally ignorant of even elementary physics! They simply wanted to make a political point. It had diddley squat to do with science. The generators will have to be recycled somehow. All the Mohawks did was ensure that some far more expensive and likely truly damaging to the environment method will have to be employed. In effect, the Mohawks have used the environment for a political tool, either ignorant or not caring about any collateral damage.

Whatever, Dr. Dre. The fact remains that there has been a strong perception out there for decades now that the Canadian system is "soft" on crime. Any successful politician deals with public persceptions. We here on MLW can argue about the validity of the perception but to a politician it doesn't matter. Any time someone comes up with rational evidence to show our system works well there will be a newspaper report of some judge somewhere making a stupid decision in sentencing. On a percentage basis stupid decisions may well not approach a significant number but it doesn't matter. Just as a Harper hater needs only one bad quote to perpetually fuel his distaste someone who believes our system is lax with criminals needs only one example for his perception.