dre

The best that can expected? Of 150+ thousand native students that passed through the system, 40 thousand were raped. More than 6000 died. Native had a better chance of dying while in these schools, than a Canadian soldier had during combat in WW2. The "best that could be expected".... Wow.

It wasn't an attempt at betterment. It was an attempt at eradicating native culture, and bring about the end of native treaties, and end natives status as a distinct legal entity. They were not trying to help the natives. They were trying to stop natives from being a problem for white people.

That's a really bad idea. Almost all of your resources would be consumed by the gigantic authoritarian police state you would have to maintain in order to control 30 million people that have been stripped of their right to self determination. Made me cringe... Hopefully you were just kidding?

Voters don't really need to know "how government works". They just need to understand in broad terms what they want government to do. We already have it. The modern plutocratic kleptocracy. The question is how do we get back to a more egalitarian democracy from here.

Well I was replying to this... "why should I be required to respect". So he made it about himself. Answer your question?

You shouldn't! Your racism, intolerance, and bigotry should be completely legal, as long as long as its just expression, and doesn't manifest itself in ways that harm others. Just remember its a too way street, and don't complain if the rest of us are intolerant of you and your views.

Yup. I know. That's why I said the central management aspect is similar but the rest of it is pretty much the opposite. Its similar in that you have countries run by unelected bureaucrats in other countries... but that's about it.

The central management aspect is similar to the USSR, but the EU is more like a technocracy. Pretty much the opposite of socialism. The real power in the EU rests in the hands of elites on the EC. Guys like ... José Manuel Durão Barroso - Chairman of Goldman Sachs international. Romano Prodi - international advisor to Goldman Sachs. Jacques Santer - Another economic elitist - At least he doesnt work for Goldman Sachs but he was on the board of General Mediterranean Holdings. A firm that set itself up to profit from the invasion of Iraq. Jacques Delors - A prominent french banker. Those are the last few presidents of the commission. None of them are fans of democracy. None of them were elected by European voters. The EU is an attempt by bankers, banks, and economic elites to try to take control of Europe away from European voters.

Right but the PM in Canada is an elected MP. The EP Commissioner and commission members are not. The people have Europe cannot "throw the bums out", which is pretty much the most important part of democracy. A better example would be if the Governor General was the only one allowed to introduce legislation. The GG is an appointee that the voters cant fire.

Sure here's a quick primer. The main two components of the EU are the EP (European Parliament) and the ECB (European Central Bank). The EP consists of 751 MEPs who are elected in their home country. They vote on legislation. The EP is seen by many though as being undemocratic because the EC (Commission) is unelected and not accountable to the people of EU member states. Only the commission can propose legisation, elected MEPS cannot. Unfortunately they DO get a lot done. They have very successfully destroyed the ability of Europeans to govern themselves through their elected officials. They have enacted thousands of laws that are imposed on EU member states and taken much of the power away from European voters and vested it in the EC.

The whole system is corrupt to the core. Drug companies pay billions of dollars per year to bribe doctors into prescribing as much of their products as possible. Prescribe enough drug X, and you get a free vacation. Prescribe enough of drug Y and you get paid big fucks by the company for speaking engagements on their behalf. Prescribe enough of drug Z, and you get paid a shitload of money to do research or for consulting. Over 6 billion has been paid in bribes in the last couple of years alone. One of the good things about CongressCare (that people mistakenly call Obamacare) is the physician payments sunshine act which force these bribes to be disclosed. If you are an American you can visit OpenPaymentsData.CMS.gov to see how much your doctor collects in return for being a drug salesman. Thats probably the main reason we have over-subscription.

I never said the US is to blame for "all the worlds ills". You just flat out made that blatant straw man up and lied about what I said. And I guarantee I pay twice as much as you towards our military. And I would gladly pay more if we had a defensive military doctrine and sensible policies. But until we have those things reasonable people have no choice but to starve civilian leaders of the tools needed to pursue interventionalist foreign policy. Out civilian leaders just flat out cant be trusted to have a powerful military. I don't like it but there's things like that, and worse happening in dozens and dozens of places around the world. We cant fix the world, and we usually make things worse, and even if we could why should I have to pay for it?

That's just a platitude. Rest of what goes away? And the reality is that interventionalist policy doesn't make any of it go away either. In increases "it", and it damages our own security, and wasted our money and the lives of our soldiers while accomplishing nothing. People that cant keep their hands to themselves are eventually going to face consequences. We mostly just make things worse. Like overthrowing the baathists which created ISIL, and inadvertantly handed Iraq over to Iran. Or overthrowing the Taliban and putting a drug lord in charge. Or like the whole GWOT in general which has resulted in a huge increase in terrorism and wasted trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

I couldn't agree more with Argus here. Here's an example... I think Canada and the US are the worst simply because corporate cronyism and quid pro quo politics are so pervasive. Big companies tell the government to jump and the government says "how high?" And we have signed trade deals that are written almost completely by industry representatives that tie our hands. If the government DID take meaningful steps to lower prices, they would probably be dragged in front of some international trade court and sued for damages by big pharmy.

That still doesn't mean you don't have friends. Dozens of countries that don't belong to formal military alliances have received help from other nations over the years. So the claim that... "You have to take care of yourself", is not necessarily true. Its not a mistake at all. There is absolutely no question that if there's an incursion onto our Territory it will be the US that we rely on because they have a self interest in helping us, and the have the means to do so, and that fact will not change, probably for centuries. We live next to a large and extremely well armed nuclear super power that we enjoy the largest trade partnership in the history of the human race with. And Norad is defensive in nature, so we don't risk being dragged into poorly though out, doomed to fail projects on the other side of the world.

That's a pretty uninformed opinion. Its blatantly obvious why those things can be useful. The decentralization of decision making that comes with having self governing nations, or even better... provinces, means that decisions are made by people that are at least familiar with the circumstances and challenges in those regions. That's exactly why the EU is falling apart, and is ultimately doomed and should be replaced by a more traditional trade agreement.

No it doesn't mean that at all. Defensive pacts can make sense. Beyond that though we should decide what to do on a case by case basis based on what we think is right, and based on our own self interest. Norad for example makes a lot of sense. Its a defensive treat, with the country that we would actually be relying on to help defend North America. Nato makes no sense at all for Canada. Its the gift that keeps on taking and we will NEVER get anything back. Do you think Estonia, or Turkey, or Abania, or Croatia are going to come to Canadas defense? Good luck with that. It will be the US. Ditch NATO... Strengthen Norad... and shift military spending more towards territorial defense and away from sad and counterproductive attempts to police the world. THAT is whats in Canadas interests.

Actually that looks more ominous for the conservatives to me. They are trying to run in a country where almost 70% of the voters support left of center. The only way I see them winning an election over the next few decades is if theres another scandal on the level of sponsorship (that's the only reason they won last time). You probably wont even live to see another Conservative government Boges!

Multi cultural-ism is not some brand new thing. Its how this nation was created. Its as old as nation itself. Its as Canadian as any of your own cultural values, which no doubt are different than mine. Whats not Canadian here is you labeling a person as an enemy of the state for simply trying to bring up an issue she thinks is important. That's more a North Korean value, or Iranian, or Chinese, or Saudi. There is no homogeneous single Canadian culture or set of values, and there never has been.

Actually, in my opinion its people like you that threaten our traditions. Canada has a history of tolerating unpopular thought. We have a culture of having many cultures. All this MP did was ask parliament to look into an issue, and you would label her an enemy of the state. Talk about uncanadian.

Monaco, Iceland, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, South Korea, Czech Republic, Spain, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Austrailia, Newzealand, Portugal, Germany, the UK. All of those have homicide rates of under 1.0. None of them have capital punishment or torture. Now lets look at some countries with stiff sentencing and capital punishment... China, Iran, Pakistan, the US, Iraq, Somalia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan, India, North Korea, Vietnam. You are more than welcome to move to one of those and see how well your ideas work in real life

Also there enough cellphone calls to family members and friends by people on those planes, that its pretty clear there WAS a highjacking. So one has to wonder... if you had "super thermite" planted in the towers, traces of which will obviously be discovered later, then why bother with the elaborate and risky project to highjack airliners at all? One that requires your own operatives to forfeit their lives, and involves a good chance of them getting caught. I think if Hot Enough put his own theory under the same microscope that hes applying to the official account, he would also find his own theory implausible or improbable. I think there WAS a coverup. I think that the government heavily redacted all the reports to protect their friends in the middle east, and prevent those relationships from coming under scrutiny which might result in the disclosure of some of the OTHER nasty shit Uncle Sam is doing around the world. But I dont see any compelling evidence at all that suggests direct involvement in the planning or execution. Its just not there.

If that's the case one would expect to see a pervasive correlation between countries that dole out severe punishment and low crime rates. But the inverse correlation exists. Its these so called "hug a thug" liberal democracies that seem to have the safest streets.

1 and 3 are not at all the same. 3 is a positive belief in something with no evidence. 1 is a reasonable assumption based on the absence of evidence and the knowledge that gods are something that humans thought up. Its not difference than saying there is no Santa Clause. Its not completely impossible that Santa Clause, his reindeer, and his elves really DO exist somewhere in the universe. But since we know we made up that story, believing that he does not exist is quite reasonable. Believing in a vast supernatural construct without a shred of evidence is completely different.

Are y Are you claiming that thermite is only available to the US military? Because it is used by private companies for a number of civilian applications.