kimmy

That's an interesting theory, and one I'll have to consider. Another theory is that many on the left tend to reflexively take the side of people they perceive as sympathetic (especially oppressed brown-people), regardless of the merits of the situation. -k

I certainly am as well. Brown homophobes who tried to bring hate speech to Canada were not welcomed. -k

That nickname wasn't coined here on this forum. -k

Here in North America, Hamas supporters, Palestinian rights activists, the folks calling Israel an "apartheid" state (and so forth) tend to be almost exclusively the left. That doesn't really parse in terms of breaking down left-right in purely economics terms, but the same can be said for equating racism with the far right. -k

I still can't wrap my head around this. I still think "heist" is the only reasonable explanation. I need -- NEED -- to know that Sheila Fraser is going to have free reign to look at these expenses as closely as she wishes. -k

-k

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of the EH-101 contract when you mentioned turning this into a political issue. Wasn't it great how Chretien convinced voters that we could save money by not buying those "Cadillac" helicopters and just using those trusty Sea Kings for a little longer? How much did "saving money" on that contract ultimately cost this country? The English have a phrase that goes "Penny smart, pound foolish." The EH-101 fiasco was mentioned not as a rationale for buying F-35s, but to point out that "saving money" can turn out to be awfully expensive. Those must be those new rescue/assault helicopters I've been hearing so much about. They also double as air-ambulances and traffic helicopters, I hear. -k

Theoretically, violence and oppression could be compatible with any portion of the political spectrum. But you've got to admit, here and now it's the left that are using violence. Setting fire to the bank in Ottawa, smashing windows in Vancouver, attacking an Olympic torch carrier, using violence to suppress speakers they disagree with, rioting to protest the G8 or APEC or whatever else is in town... -k

How about the young woman who ? She's willing to say so in polite company, but I bet that more than a few people would be willing to give her a pop in the nose for saying so. -k

I think August's inspiration for this thread was the thread about female circumcision that's currently going on elsewhere on the board. That thread referenced a newspaper article where a couple of academics try and soft-sell a more tolerant attitude towards female circumcision by condemning criticism as "cultural imperialism" and invoking cultural relativism (to paraphrase: "we might be upset by this, but they think they're doing the best thing for their daughters!") I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find examples of tolerant, high-minded folks arguing in favor of beliefs that are at odds with womens' rights in cases where those beliefs are held by some oppressed minority. I'm guessing discussions about Sharia in Canada would be a good place to start looking. -k

I'd have given him my "digits" ... five of them... on the tip of his chin... in a way that would cause him to experience headaches, nausea, and blurry vision for weeks afterward. -k

The premise that you can't love black people unless you love a city that most people on earth, including most black people, will never even visit, is pretty dumb. I have not been to Detroit, but saw it from across the river in Windsor. As I walked along the riverside park with its busy trail filled with people of all colors and creeds, I saw joggers and cyclists and rollerskaters, I saw people fishing and flying kites. On the water, I watched the freighters heading east, carrying cargo of who-knows what to who-knows where. Across the river, I saw the Joe Louis Arena, home of the mighty Detroit Red Wings, a team in an American city playing Canada's favorite sport, a team beloved by many Canadians, especially in the southernmost tip of Ontario. I also saw many grand old buildings, beautiful and elaborate towers that in today's world would be built with featureless glass and panel sides. I saw the General Motors headquarters, that dated yet still imposing building, embodying some 1960s ideal of what the future would look like, home of a corporation, embattled then, but still an employer of huge numbers of Canadians as well as Americans. And when I reached the Ambassador Bridge, I was almost overcome. The huge highway trucks going across the bridge, both ways, looked like tiny toys, they were so dwarfed by the bridge. The bridge, I thought, was a beautiful and inspiring structure, a physical embodiment of the relationship between our countries. I can not say that I love Detroit, but I do love that there is a place where the relationship between Canada and the United States is embodied in an almost literal, physical sense. This is a wonderful place, I thought to myself. And I thought of the riverside houses for sale I had seen earlier that day, looking out at Belle Isle Park, houses that I could have bought for practically pocket change. And I thought "I should." But then I thought "But if I did, then I'd be unemployed and broke just like the rest of these deadbeats." -k

Claudia Schiffer dated black men? hmm. After being with that douchebag magician, I'm surprised she didn't give up on men altogether and go straight to chicks. The blondes are not trophies. They're people. They make decisions about who to date or who not to date in pretty much the same way that anybody else does. Those who I'd punch in the face are not those whose politics I disagree with, but rather those who conduct themselves like scumbags. -k

Removal of the foreskin is obviously still a common practice here in the west. But if you wanted to find a doctor who would perform "type 3" and "type 4" (as described in that video) male circumcision on a child, I think you would have an extremely difficult time. I think any doctor would view it as a clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath. I think a lobby to legalize and provide access for parents wishing to have this done to their sons would be met with nothing but scorn and derision. I would join in that scorn and derision. -k

It's no doubt a contentious issue. The second video makes an excellent argument. I wish to point out that when we in the west discuss circumcision of males, we are almost exclusively referring to what he labels Type 1 and Type 2 (partial or complete removal of the foreskin), which he ranks low on his scale of severity. Discussions tend to ignore what he labels type 3 and type 4 male circumcision, because those procedures are completely unheard of in the west. Conversely, when we discuss female "circumcision", we are almost inevitably discussing the sort that certain immigrants wish to have performed on their daughters (partial or total removal of the clitoris and partial or total removal of the labia), all of which he ranks high on his scale of severity. I said earlier I think it is horribly wrong to compare the removal of the foreskin to the removal of the clitoris, and the person who made this video agrees completely, and he says so explicitly. -k

... All of this sounds like a great argument as to why the government shouldn't have bought these mortgages from the banks at all. -k

The Citizen did not misrepresent anything. The use of the words conspiracy and lie is an entirely fair description of what Stats Canada claims occurred, whether Stats Canada chose to describe it that way or not. ie, creating a false appearance of need for French language services in certain areas. The incident I'm thinking of (it was in a MacLean's magazine I read last month) was not a result of new census data. It was a result of a small town being inexplicably added to the "National Capital Region" and being declared "bilingual" as a result. But whether the cause was an arbitrary bureaucratic decision or liars providing fake information on their census, the result is the same: discriminatory hiring practices by the government. Yeah, and thanks to a bunch of liars, she's trying to do so based on false information. -k

Did you, uh, actually read any of this thread? So actually the banks were helping out the government by providing this excellent investment opportunity! What a swell bunch of guys! If these mortgages were such a swell investment, it puzzles me that the banks were willing to give them up at all. -k

My eReader is an application that runs on my cellphone. It fits easily inside my pocket, it's incredibly convenient, and it's with me all the time anyway. If I was a big purse type, I suppose I could carry a paperback with me all the time, but even at that you have to have both hands free. A book, even a paperback, doesn't fit conveniently in a typical pocket. It requires both hands to use. You can't read it if it's dark or if it's windy. Do you take a book with you whenever you leave the house? If you're in a lineup at the grocery store, can you pull it out and read a few pages while you have a spare minute to kill, or do you have to settle for the Inquirer? I can take out my book and read a few pages without even setting down my basket of groceries. -k

I dunno, Morris, back in 2008 when I looked around the city I live in and saw folks earning around what I'm earning moving into these $400,000+ homes, I questioned the sense of lending these people the money to do it. And when I heard the government was buying $50 billion in risky mortgages off the banks, it made me question the sense of protecting the people who lent those people from the consequences of that decision. And now I look around and the housing prices are back up as high as they were before the "global economic meltdown" and people are still getting mortgages that would take them several lifetimes to pay off. Think we sent the wrong message? Think that showing the banks we'd protect them from risky mortgages just encouraged them to write up a bunch more risky mortgages? Housing prices keep going up and everybody wins! Realtors win! Banks win! People who sell property win! People who buy property don't win right now, but they win next year because property prices just keep inflating, right? Everybody wins! Except for whoever gets left holding the bag when the bubble bursts... and it sounds like that's the taxpayers of Canada. I don't see why taxpayers should be in the business of protecting banks from the big fat bubble they're building. I think we're getting scammed, Morris. -k

I've also been using eBooks lately. I've found an excellent eBook reading application for my Android cellphone. ( , website here) and have been using it a lot. I've read 3.5 novels on my cellphone in the past 2 months... I have probably not read that many paper novels in the whole year prior. I would phrase it differently. In some ways, they're a terrific substitute for printed books. The convenience of being able to carry the book you're reading (and 1000 more) in your pocket wherever you go, for me, is an advantage to this format that allows me to do far more reading than I would otherwise. And the ability to read with one hand, in light or dark, in wind or rain, is something that likewise you can't do with a paper book. In return for this convenience, you sacrifice the ease of navigation and tactile experience you have with a paper book. I don't think an ebook reader provides an adequate substitute for the feeling of sitting in a cozy chair with a cup of tea and a nice book. Then again, that's something I seldom made time for myself to do anyway, and I don't actually have a decent cozy chair in my furnishings. Agreed. Navigating through ebooks is a chore if you're doing anything other than reading front to back. My application does allow me to place bookmarks, but you never know what detail you're going to need to go back and re-read, so you didn't know to put a bookmark where you needed to. Mine is fairly quick. I do a "swipe" gesture across my phone's touch-screen, and the old page scrolls off the left of the screen and the new one scrolls on from the right, real-time. It's a minor point, but from a look-and-feel standpoint, it makes things fairly seamless for the user. Such an arrangement would be much more difficult to use one-handed, which for me is one of the best advantages of reading books on my cellphone. But there's a vast wealth of free books out there that you never need rummage through garage sales again. Agreed. As my eReader only supports one format (ePub, I think) I've had to use software to convert my eBooks into this format. The results have been mixed. I'm not sure what's under the hood of a Kindle or a Sony or any of the other dedicated eReaders on the market right now. The processor in my cellphone is entirely adequate to the task. Bottom line: it may not be as good as a real book if you have the time to sit down and read, but that's more than balanced out by the convenience of being able to read your book whenever and wherever you like. -k

What Statistics Canada clearly said is that there was a campaign to provide inaccurate information. What's laughable is that you're somehow attempting to argue otherwise because they didn't use the words "conspiracy" and "lie". Why isn't that a real issue? No facts have been misrepresented. That the Ottawa Citizen chose to use more controversial language in describing this campaign to provide inaccurate responses to the census does not change that. Statistics Canada has chosen to avoid controversy as much as possible. A newspaper is under no obligation to do the same. Whether the liars did their homework before the campaign is beside the point. They obviously wanted to create a false impression that there was a greater need for french language services than really exists. And the quote from Ms Meilleur that I provided above explains the problem. She wants to know where french language services are needed. I've never said anything other. I mentioned "postmaster" because I'd just recently read about an Ontario postmaster who lost her job because her little anglophone town somehow got defined as a bilingual community; a bilingual postmaster was required to serve the fictional francophone community. The liars who responded to this census were no doubt hoping to create more fictional francophone communities to create a fictional need for more bilingual services. -k

Brick Top is a great one for sure. -Bill The Butcher from "Gangs of New York" -for sheer campy fun, I think Khan from Star Trek II is a classic. -k

Who cares if Stats Canada deny using the words "conspiracy" and "lie"? What they're describing can reasonably be described as a conspiracy, and providing inaccurate information can certainly be described as lying. An anonymous email that was widely circulated. If thousands of people receive something and forward it on to their friends, well, "organized" might not be the right word, but it's certainly a group effort. And it's a reasonable description of what Stats Canada says happened. You're the one who raised the subject, when you made the inaccurate claim that "the provision of services or funding to minority-language organization is based on the mother-tongue spoken." Your claim was (first off) wrong, in light of Ontario's revised definition, and secondly, misses the objective of those who lied on their census: "As a government, we need to know where these people live to better plan for the provision of French-language services, especially in the larger metropolitan areas that attract a significant number of newcomers." -Madeleine Meilleur, Ontario Minister of Language Police Or, to paraphrase: "if we can trick Stats Canada into thinking that there's a whole bunch of Francophones here in Stittsville, we can get a French post-master at the post office!" -k