Scotty

Reagan did absolutely nothing to 'bring home' American hostages. They were released on inauguration day. Scott Walker sounds like a typical Republican working for his constituents. Of course, his constituents are millionaires, conservative PACs, special interest groups and the corporations and their lobby groups who in reality pay him far more than the taxpayers. And few of the children of such people attend public school, so they don't really care what happens to the public schools.

Watson can go and try and live in the Arctic Tundra and see if it computes there any better. Forget the pretty pictures on your map. Canada is a long, slender country about 100 miles wide that follows the US border. That's our house. The rest is just a big back yard. It's nice to have a big back yard, but you don't live there. And the house is getting crowded.

Most of them, of course, are not all that skilled. Of those who come in under the 'skilled' program, the majority are family members of the skilled individual. Only about 17% of immigrants are actually assessed as to their language, skills, education, etc. The rest are family members, refugees (who become immigrants almost automatically) and then those coming in in under various other family and economic programs. This is why every public housing project in central Canada is overrun with immigrants.

Do you have any evidence to support that statement? I'm not looking for a quote from a politicians but actual statistical economic data. There is no evidence whatsoever that immigration will have any helpful effect on an aging population. The average age of immigrants is approximately the same as the average age of Canadians. Or maybe it leaves a smaller group in a less crowded nation, which will mean people can enjoy life more.

Canada is one of the most populous countries in the world (35th out of 220), and is growing crowded. There is no evidence I have ever seen that massive immigration does anything worthwhile in terms of the economic betterment of the existing population. There is also no evidence it will have any salutary effect in terms of an aging population. Immigration in Canada is not driven by economics, it is driven by politics.

Yet! But that is the danger in bringing over large numbers of immigrants when many of them are doing very poorly economically. They will settle into poorer areas and slums will develop. We see some of this now, with certain poor areas well-known for the large numbers of people from certain ethnic groups who reside there.

[quote name='WIP' date='18 February 2011 - 04:19 PM' timestamp='1298058559' post='627556' From a cultural perspective, Egypt and many other Middle Eastern countries (India also) never had women in public before the last 30 years or so. The covering up of women in many cases has come from the women, not the men, in an attempt to achieve some protection from unwanted groping or fondling from men when they are riding buses and going to and from work. Well, if that's the case it hasn't worked. The great majority of those who are groped are dressed modestly, and wearing the hijab. It doesn't seem to matter to Egyptian men what they wear, except that they seem more free in their groping of foreign women, perhaps believing them to be more helpless.

I don't think you can 'force' integration. I think integration with a surrounding culture is the norm, as long as you let it happen and do nothing to stand in its way. I think, however, you need to make less accommodation than was made in the UK. I think you need to step on anti-social behavior and beliefs hard, right at the outset, not practice 'respect' for the different culture which practices them. And instead of working so hard to protect the feelings of newcomers from offense you need to ensure your native population doesn't start feeling resentment and offense for that begins a process of rising racism followed by the counter resentment of the newcomers to the native population. The difficult with Muslims is the intermingling of cultural and religious values. We often feel constrained from acting against a value when it's being touted as religious in nature. As an example, the garb Muslim women are often wearing, which is really cultural but which is touted as religious. There was a bit on the news the other day showing graduating classes at an Egyptian university. Forty years ago almost all were wearing regular style clothing, modest but western. Twenty years ago some of them were wearing head scarves. Last year almost all are wearing head scarves and many are wearing the hijabs. So were Egyptians not religious forty years ago? Of course they were, but cultural norms have shifted. I would agree we do a better job than Europe in large measure because we are LESS multicultural than they are, because of a cultural assumption among Canadians, almost all of whom are derived from immigrants, that immigrants need to integrate just as their/our forefathers/grandparents did. This goes against the grain of the multicultural industry, if you will, of cherishing every difference and equating all cultures and their values in an even-handed fashion. In the US, of course, there is even more of an assumption on the need to integrate, as that integration has become a part of the American fabric of mythology surrounding their history - the immigrant who becomes an American, and whose children are virtually indistinguishable from the American mainstream.

I'm not a woman, but I believe I have a good deal of empathy for women, and I believe sexual assault can be more severe and damaging, long term (emotionally) than other types of assault. Not to mention the fact sexual assault often comes on top of the regular beatings in these cases. You know, I just disagree. I think that an attractive woman in that type of situation is more prone to attract violence than, say, a large, strong man. I don't in any way mean to imply that is her fault or that there's anything she can do about it. That's simply the reality of the situation.

I happen to be a shop steward myself. It's true that increments happen regardless of whether you're working hard or not. However, the cliche of the union worker not working hard is just that, a cliche. Discipline exists within all organizations, regardless of union activity. If disciplinary measures aren't being taken against a 'lazy' worker that's management's fault. I can tell you that there is very little in our collective agreement about the specifics discipline. Still, discipline is avoided by many managers simply because Human Resources and Staff Relations have surrounded even the simplest of disciplinary measures with a grandiose policy mechanism which consumes untold time and resources.

Cybercoma, I don't doubt this is correct, and that most anyone on welfare would rather be in a nice, well-paying job, or perhaps simply rich without one. But the fact remains that of those who are on social assistance long term it is rarely simply a matter of misfortune. The decisions and actions we make in life follow us, and either restrict or enhance our opportunities later in life. Then, too, there's the matter of drive and ambition. Not everyone has either. Some people would work, but don't see the chance, giving up too easily. Some want the good job, but aren't willing to take the crummy jobs you need to transition through first. Then, too, some people are simply not emotionally accepting of the rigid nine to five work life needed in most organizations - all the rules and regulations and behavior requirements, etc. I agree that portraying them as all simply lazy or the product of their own bad decisions is wrong. But it's also wrong to suggest they're all they're all there due to no fault of their own.

There was a piece in the Globe this morning which kind of agreed with August's view. Those who hate the tories seem to love these little stories, but I don't think they're gaining the opposition much traction with the voters. The Liberals are making the government’s authoritarian and abusive approach to the rights of Parliament and the people a key element of their election message. How could they not, given this government’s behaviour? But the number of people who care about parliamentary privilege is minuscule. That does not mean most people don’t have political values. We know from endless polling and from conversations in bars – sorry, at Tim Hortons – that a lot of us were spooked by the last recession, a lot of us are still leery about where the economy is headed, and a lot of us think the streets are becoming more dangerous. And don’t wave a StatsCan data set showing it’s not true. People know what they know. So while the opposition spent an entire week devoted to the Conservatives’ contempt for Parliament, the Conservatives, not even bothering to notice, carried on pounding their themes of fiscal responsibility and getting tough on crime. Who do you think had the better strategy? John Ibbitson

Yes, they're happy to be here. Who wouldn't be? Probably five billion or so people in the world would be happy to be here. That doesn't mean it's good for existing Canadians to bring them over. The statistics on how immigrants are faring tell a story of increasing poverty among them. And I am uneasy about importing so many people from cultures which are so hostile to our own values, and the difficulty of integrating them when schools are becoming 70-80-90% immigrant in many urban areas. I would bet the Pakistanis who arrived in Britain and the Algerians who arrived in France twenty years ago were happy to be there, too. That hasn't stopped the social unrest, or the race riots, or the development of 'no go' areas, and a huge number of people who feel hostile towards their own country, and see it as hostile to them.

Harper is not an economist. Nor is he a conservative. Harper is a pragmatist above all things. He's clearly decided that getting votes from the rising number of immigrant and ethnic voters is necessary for him to get his long-cherished majority. To that end, he has bowed to the immigration industry just as the Liberals had, and is doing his best to suck up to local ethnic and immigrant leaders - much as he is to Quebec.

What exactly does this mean? During the Chretien government, as is normal in a majority, all committees had a majority of government MPs, and as such they toed the party line. I imagine that would happen under Harper, too. I actually think and hope that with a secure majority and four years until another election they would relax and free up information more. I think they would do away with party subsidies, but it's clearly not in their interests to loosen the tight rules on election donations as big corporate interests and the wealthy were where the Liberals got most of their money prior to Chretien changing the rules. So we would be very far from the American template. We could stand to get tougher, and the hug-a-thug-approach does not seem to have worked here any better. That was what happened under Chretien. Or have you forgotten that nothing mattered but trade? We criticized no one, and we did business, eagerly, with anyone.

I don't have a problem with any of that, provided its done intelligently. Ie, I don't want the CBC to dissapear, and I don't want wholesale firings and labour unrest from the public service similar to what Harris got when he simply fired public servants.

Yes, that was kind of my opinion, as well. If she's to be censured it should be for getting caught in a lie. I am a bit world-weary about the self righteousness and mock outrage of the opposition, though, as I consider all politicians to be routine and repeated liars. Bev Oda has never struck me as a particularly sophisticated and intellectual woman. I can easily see her seeing the form, seeing no place to say 'no' and simply inserting 'no' before signing it, thinking that was the most appropriate thing to do. I can then see her getting flustered when asked about it, and denying it before she had much chance to work out what she ought to be doing (read consult with her spin doctor).

By now I'm sure most have heard at least something about the sexual assault on CBS news correspondent Lara Logan in Egypt last week. I'm troubled by various aspects of what has been said and done so far, and the available news, which seems scant given how much media play this story has been given. Initial report The first thing which struck me was the violation of the reporter's privacy involved in the initial CBS report, which stated she was subjected to d "a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating." Was it actually necessary to impart that much information to the world? Did she consent to the wording? And what does the report actually mean? It implies rape, but there have been a number of denials of this. In addition, CBS thoughtfully reported the next day that she had suffered 'internal injuries'. Again, was Logan consulted about these reports? The media doesn't seem to know quite how to handle the story. There have been a number of awkward reports, and at least one forced resignation from one idiot who basically joked about it, saying she was trying to outdo Anderson Cooper, then played down the importance of the attack as, to paraphrase "big deal, she was probably just groped", and she's a warmonger anyway. We Ask the Wrong Questions When Female Journalists Are Assaulted There have also been a number of suggestions that it was basically her fault, that women, particularly western women, and even more particularly attractive blondes have no business going into areas where law and order has degenerated. Egypt, or at least, Cairo, is groper central, with 98% of foreign women reporting sexual harassment or assault during their stay there - on a daily basis. And that's during a time of law and order! A network source is quoted by a number of bloggers and sites as saying the attackers screamed "Jew" at her during the attack, though she is not Jewish. During her early detention by Egyptian soldiers she said the soldiers also accused her of being an Israeli spy. This seems an indication of the continued fixation, even obsession many in the Arab world have with Israel and Jews. But, interestingly, this is absent from most mainstream reports. And as noted by the Jerusalem Post, CBS took a week to even report the attack on her at all. The media, according to the Post, have been attacked repeatedly during the uprising but have been reluctant to report such assaults because it doesn't fit in with the vision (of the crowds) of brave and noble democracy lovers they're trying to create for their audience. Pointing out that many of them are misogynistic anti-Semites doesn't go well with that vision. For my own part, I think that women have to be especially wary anywhere that social breakdown has resulted in a lack of law and order. And from those I've known who have spent time in the middle east, there is a strange fascination with blondes among Arab men. It's as though the mythology created by Hollywood of the blonde as 'sex goddess' has been absorbed wholesale by Arab men, and given their ignorance of sexuality and the forbidden nature of female sexual enjoyment (97% of Egyptian women have undergone female genital mutilation) an attractive blonde can be like a vision from another planet to some of these people. I don't blame her for what happened, or even for going there. But I do blame CBS for not having enough security around her. Jerusalem Post

I agree, but with respect to him as a poster, he does not, in my opinion, have the restraint needed for the job.

No, Wyly, you misunderstand the job. It isn't to be neutral in your political outlook, and it isn't to be extremely knowledgeable about world or political events. What you need is to have a history of posting without insulting people, and even avoiding insulting people. You might disagree with someone like, say, August, but he posts on topic and without trying to be insulting and disrespectful to other posters. I'm not saying anyone on the list I posted hasn't ever insulted anyone, just that they seem to try to avoid it more than others I could think of.

Aside from the college kids dressed as soldiers in the summer I haven't noticed a great deal of police presence except at official occasions.

Even an elected senate would require a constitutional amendment, and thus agreement from the provinces. Good luck getting Quebec to agree to anything which dilutes its power in any way. I think they would probably be much more severe in cutbacks of federal agencies, probably cut money for culture and heritage, but I really don't know. Harper is not so much a small c conservative any more as a small p pragmatist, and isn't likely to do anything to upset his chances, even with a majority, of getting re-elected with another majority.

I think you could do the job, too. You're one of the few people here I think I've never reported.

Of course we did. We simply conquered with pens and contracts instead of guns. And we did a better job of it. The natives in Canada got to keep far, far less land than the natives in the U.S. did. As Wiki points out The collective geographical area of all reservations in the United States is 55.7 million acres (225,410 km²), representing 2.3% of the area of the United States (2,379,400,204 acres; 9,629,091 km²). Twelve Indian reservations are larger than the state of Rhode Island (776,960 acres; 3,144 km²) and nine reservations larger than Delaware (1,316,480 acres; 5,327 km As far as I know there were no laws against hand guns or any other kind of guns until round about the beginning of the 20th century. Canada has always had a lot of guns. They were an intrinsic part of the tool kit for all early rural Canadians. What was different about the way the US and Canada were developed was that Canada created a police force and sent it out into the developing lands of the northwest in many cases ahead of the settlers. Thus the law was there at the same time as or even before the settlers arrived. In the US there was little or no law, at first, and so the hand gun was seen as protection against the numerous outlaws who sprang up.

I think the hostile cultural values were already present in the cultural groups which made up a lot of the immigrants coming to the U.K. What the British did was to practice "respect" and "tolerance" to a fault, in that no effort was made to integrate these newcomers into the greater English society. To attempt to do that would, it was assumed, imply a sense of superiority of the British culture over that of the newcomers. British policy for much of the last forty years was to encourage the newcomers to feel at home as they were. And that's jut what happened. Many of the newcomers failed to integrate, and this bred resentment as they felt like outsiders in their own 'home', apart from the main culture, and felt little kinship for ordinary Britains. One would think that if this were the case it would be a general case for all the immigrants who came to the U.K., as opposed, specifically, to Muslim immigrants. A good many residents of Hong Kong immigrated to the U.K., for example and did quite well, far better than Muslim immigrants have. And as I pointed out to him, our society is far more open to outsiders than it was then, and far less likely to have any such unreasonable, xenophobic reactions. Further, we have immigrants from many parts of the world. Why don't they get the same reaction?