kimmy

Suppose he'd posted a pithy comment like "The religion of peace! " after the link to the article? There's a number of posters here who start threads with nothing more than a link and a minimal synopsis, and I have yet to see anybody go to the mods about it. Why in this case? Is it really that you're upset by this breach of the forum rules, or is it more because you don't like the content of the article? -k

-Bubber "The Most Interesting Man In The World" Miley. -k

I think you overestimate how much of a factor the "progressives" really are at the polls. All the Liberals really need to do to win the next election is to win back all the former supporters who they drove to the Conservatives, and all the people who used to vote Liberal but have been staying home on election night because they didn't like any of the choices. -k

I thought attacks on police in uniform were treated especially seriously because they are an attack not just on a person but also on the rule of law itself. If it's just that police in uniform are easily identifiable, why aren't attacks on bakers also treated especially seriously? They're easily identifiable... they wear those funny white hats... I don't disagree with the premise that hate should be a factor to be considered in sentencing, as could numerous other factors. However, if there were some push to make "hate crime" something more than just a consideration during sentencing, I would be opposed. I recall when that when that poor young man was beheaded on the Greyhound last year, there were rumours that the suspect had a shaved head, and that the victim was a native, and people (some on this very forum, I believe) were talking about it being a hate-crime. (Or course, once it was learned that the attacker was Chinese and the victim was white, the same people began to suspect that the attacker was lashing out against racist mistreatment...) I also recall a few years ago when a pair of hapless white teenagers were swarmed by natives at a north-Edmonton transit terminal, the police spokesperson was bending over backwards to explain why the police weren't looking at it as a racially motivated crime. When it's white people's behavior under suspicion, I think people tend to be too quick and eager to read race into situations where it's not really at the source of the conflict. And I think that racism might be overlooked or excused in opposite situations. All of which is a long way of saying that if hate is something that is left to a judge's discretion as a factor to consider when he is determining a sentence for a crime, then I am fine with that... but if hate is something that a crown prosecutor can pull out of his bag of tricks when he is deciding to lay charges, then I think that could only lead to shame and disrepute for our justice system. -k

What a superb ambassador for tolerance you are. -k

People who have been on this forum for any length of time know very well that I am among the last people who would be a shill or an apologist for the Liberal Party of Canada. My reaction to all things LPC is generally among mistrust, cynicism, antipathy, or blind irrational hatred. However, this Michael Ignatieff continues to be a man I will definitely consider giving my vote to when the next election comes around. And these quotes do nothing to change that. I don't know if our reputation as peacekeepers is "entirely bogus", but I am quite sure that it is of far less importance around the world than it is to our collective national self-esteem. He missed a great example-- Australia's intervention in East Timor is an example of a time when somebody other than the Americans put forth the military effort in the cause of justice. Overall, though, I think he makes a good point. I think he makes a good point. There are situations where providing human security requires military capability... and few countries aside from the United States have the capability to do so. I think that most Canadians want us to live up to commitments we make. Whether that be military (participating in NATO operations, for instance) or humanitarian (having the transport capability to get aid to disaster areas, for instance) we should have the capability to do the things that we as a nation promise other countries we will do. -k

The topic has evolved from the incident in Courtenay to the discussion of the validity of the concept of hate crimes, to --apparently-- discussing "alternate measures". Perhaps these three should be taken to a "sentencing circle". We call such a place "prison". Are you advocating something else? "Re-education camps" or something? -k { }

This thread hasn't been about the original topic for several pages. Why are you allowed to discuss stuff not on the original topic, but not others? Are you a special snowflake? Obviously the ice floe was a joke, but you don't appear to have been joking when you wrote "It's racist louts and white supremacists who should have to leave the country, imo." or "Those who attempt to exclude others should themselves be excluded." or "Of course, the 'deport on an ice floe with some Macdonalds fries' was a joke, but serves to illustrate the point: If you don't respect multicultural Canada, bugger off!" ...so again, I'm curious to know, is it just the racists you think should "bugger off", or are there others too? -k

All of this is incredible. I got chills up my spine and tears in my eyes watching "this great beast" carry the astronauts into the sky. -k

The commercial blurs the difference between the speed with which the stimulus measures were implemented ("right now", "immediately", etc) and the speed with which the stimulus would begin to have an effect ("...not designed to work in 4 months".) I can't recall that anybody ever claimed that even if all that money got released this spring (did it?) that it would have ended the recession just a fiscal quarter later. This is just plain dishonest advertising, in my view. -k

Who suggested he was? I was responding to Tango's views that we should deport people whose views we disagree with. I'm just wondering why in her opinion that should be restricted to racists, when there are so many other unCanadian views we could deport. I wasn't discussing the attack at all, -k

My apologies. Rather than "bullshit... bullshit... bullshit," I should have written "citation please? citation please? citation please?" bullsh-- er, citation please? Reform stood for effective representation of all regions of the country, and advocated senate reform as an antidote to the population disparities that make the interests of the less populous provinces unimportant to the federal government. Reform stood for equal treatment of all provinces, and opposed the ongoing invocation of separatism as a justification for steps taken to buy Quebec's love. Decentralization of power is an extreme right-wing position? Are the Quebecers also extreme right wingers? Because more autonomy has been Quebec's main interest for decades. Believing there's a role for private healthcare providers and private health insurance is an extreme right-wing position? That Barack fellow... he's an extreme rightwinger by this definition, yes? I have heard that wide popular support for Reforms' fiscal conservatism was the driving factor in the Liberal push to balance the budget in the mid 1990s. I think that alone is sufficient evidence that this was not an "extreme right wing" position at all. The sheer number of times I read on this forum where some progressive prefaces their views by saying "I am a fiscal conservative, but..." makes me believe that there is nothing "extreme" about it at all. Gee, that sounds terrible! As already discussed, there is widespread division on the issue of abortion. Labelling either side of the issue as "extreme" is unwarranted. bullsh-- uh, citation please? Some people apparently think opposing state-sponsored multiculturalism and state-enforced bilingualism, and hating minorities and French people are the exact same thing. While the support for referendums was a controversial (and impractical) part of the Reform platform, I don't see that this posed a threat to anyone's civil liberties. People would have had the exact same protection against the majority opinion that they always have against the majority opinion, or any other measure the government chooses to impose, majority-driven or not. One can find supporters of any political party whose views would be embarrassing to the party as a whole. ("Don't support Bob Rae! He is married to a Jew!") While you started off with all this hyperbole-- "against minority rights!" "want to break up the country!" "extremism!" -- your attempt to justify those comments falls considerably short of the hyperbole. An enemy of the Reform Party invoking "scary scary scary"? Shocking. Dalton Camp was a bitter old man who never forgave Reform for putting his Progressive Conservatives out of business. -k

By the by, as much as I dislike the general tone of just about everything Lictor writes, he is right about one thing: making "hate crime" a crime in and of itself would, indeed, be a perversion of our system of justice. -k

You're reading too much into benny's one-liners. Ascribing any meaning at all to benny's one-liners is to give him far too much credit. benny isn't a real person, he's a fortune-cookie slogan generating algorithm that has mistakenly been set to print its output to the internet rather than to narrow strips of paper that fit into crisp folded pastries. -k {"To progress, one must take a step, and then another."}

Why is refusing to respect multiculturalism any worse than refusing to respect any other of Canada's identifying traits? What about "if you can't speak one of Canada's official languages, bugger off?" What about "if you can't respect the separation of our law from religion, bugger off?" What about "if you can't accept the rights of women, bugger off?" Personally, I think that if somebody takes their daughter to East Africa to have her genitals mutilated for cultural/religious reasons, they ought to not bother coming back to Canada. If we're going to start banishing people for not buying into Canadian values, there's a lot of people I'd put on the boat along with these three. -k

I don't know if you've looked at a public opinion poll on either of these topics, but opposing unregulated access to abortion and gay marriage *are* mainstream opinions. bullshit. bullshit. Since the Clarity Act, that crowning jewel of Liberal national unity achievements, was lifted more or less word-for-word from Preston Manning's own policy statements on the subject, I think you're full of crap here as well. bullshit. How do you sleep at night? -k

I highly doubt it is as unanimous as you suggest, or as simplistic as jbg suggests. -k

Well, Levi *is* an adult, not a 14 year old... this distinction made a WORLD of difference to David Letterman's supporters, so I thought it should be mentioned here. But more germane to the issue: is it fair that Letterman and Buchanan are not held to the same standard? Hell yes. The standards are different because the people and the situations are different. Ask David Letterman himself if he'd like to be held to the same low standards that people like Coulter and Buchanan are held to, and he would be offended. People like Buchanan and Coulter are held to very low standards, because people have very low expectations of them, because they are very low people. Suggesting that David Letterman ought to be held to the same standard as those people would be a huge slap in the face to David Letterman. They're partisan hacks, agitators, trolls, and basically scumbags. Letterman? He aspires to be, in his own words, Our TV Pal. I expect better behavior from my TV pal. Those other turds, I couldn't care less about. -k

Welcome back! How was your trip to 1993? -k

Well thank god you came along. I was just thinking the other day, that since the Black Helicopters took PolyNewbie away, there's been nobody to spray Alex Jones inspired dog-crap all over the forum. Thank heavens that somebody has come along to carry the torch. Alex Jones: a true American patriot piece of crap. -k

I don't get it... you guys are usually among the brightest posters here... how is it that Mrs Palin causes usually sensible people to spew jibberish? huh? That's like saying it would be impossible to kill yourself with a knife, since you'd be dead and unable to deliver the fatal cut. You're not dead until after you've delivered the fatal cut, and the wolves wouldn't starve until after they're out of food. If there were an imbalance in the number of predators and the number of prey, it would certainly be possible for catastrophic damage to be done to the numbers of prey animals before the predators starved themselves to death. Your argument also supposes that caribou are the only food source for wolves; obviously that is not the case. As in: the wolf population could sustain itself on smaller prey and live long enough to keep diminishing the caribou herd. I'm sure the wolf cull is extremely controversial among naturalists, but dismissing it as unnecessary based on some sort of assumed proportional relationship of predator population to the population of *one* of their prey seems awfully presumptuous. And really. Trying to represent this as a recreational activity is just dumb. -k {"Neuter them?! I don't know about where you're from, mister, but out here the wolves *eat* the sheep."}

I'm glad you took the time to listen. It is all a matter of what you consider mainstream, Bill. All of the acts I mentioned above, except for Ladytron, can be heard on your local Canadian "modern rock" format FM radio station. (you wouldn't hear Kyuss, per se, but you'd certainly hear their present incarnation, "Queens of the Stone Age".) All of these acts could likewise easily be found on a trip through any half-decent record store in Canada, again with the exception of Ladytron. As far as album sales, I think that recent "alternative rock" albums by acts like Muse, The Killers, the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, and others have sold a volume of records that would rank with "mainstream" artists. Arcade Fire and Sam Roberts have had platinum album sales in Canada, though not had the same level of success internationally. Kasabian likewise in England. If I can turn on an FM radio and hear an artist, and find their record in the first store I go into, does that make them mainstream? Do gold or platinum records make an artist mainsteam? Or does there also have to be some element that if you asked someone on the street whether they liked "Muse" and "Arcade Fire", they'd have any idea what you were talking about? I am not sure that there even is such a thing as "the mainstream" anymore. There are certainly still plenty of artists who have great commercial success, but they are in lots of different genres from rap to country to pop to alternative rock... and I don't think you can point to any of them and say that it's what everybody is listening to, because everybody is listening to their own thing now. The music market is far more fragmented than it used to be, which will probably prevent anybody from ever reaching the status of Elvis or The Beatles again. Maybe "Kanye West" or "1 Cent" are as big in rap-music circles as Elvis used to be, but who outside of rap-music fans would know? -k

This article puts the number of cases under investigation at 18 since 1969, rather than 32 since 1988, so I am skeptical of your uncited Wiki source. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Families+...4194/story.html As well, I highly doubt the claim that all but one of the victims are native, since at least 3 of the women (Nicole Hoar, Deena Lyn Braem, and Shelly-Ann Bascu) aren't native. -k

I believe a number of the murdered and missing women are white; looking at racism as a motive seems like quite a stretch. -k

Don't we rely on a judge's discretion in every other situation when deciding sentences? I am not a lawyer, and don't know the specifics. However, I believe their is no actual law under which this incident could be filed as a "hate crime." Rather, the legal system would look at this as an assault; Canada's law reminds judges to consider hate as a factor in determining the sentence (as it should be, in my opinion.) What I would not want is a situation where hate crime is a crime in itself where charges could be laid arbitrarily. ie, a kid throws a rock through a window of one store and gets sentenced to a fine and community service... but if the shop next door is owned by Lebanese immigrants then it's a fine, community service, and a mandatory 2 year sentence for hate crimes. Yes, I think judge's discretion is a good thing... much better than leaving it at the discretion of a crown prosecutor, at least. Is this a particularly heinous crime? Would it have been a particularly heinous crime if the man on the receiving end of this aggression were a white man? Is the heinousness predicated on what actually occurred, or on the motivation behind it? Young men (and young women, in fact) attempting to provoke a fist-fight with other young men (or young women) is exceedingly commonplace. Canada is full of young, hyperaggressive jerks who feel as if intimidating their peers would be a way to make them feel better about themselves. In tough times like these (particularly in a town where I believe the dismal forestry sector is the major employer) the hyperaggressive jerks are likely feeling worse about their miserable lives than ever. -k