Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Government Going Big Brother?
Eh-Wire writes "If this article by Canadian privacy expert Michael Geist is any indication of what the Canadian Government has in mind for the Canadian Internet surfing public, then it looks like the Canadian public should be concerned. This does not look good!"
Well, there go my plans to move to Canada.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Where is our Privacy Commission during this?
Trolling is a art,
There was an article a month or two ago outlining how the FBI was looking into requiring VoIP providers to allow FBI agents to wiretap conversations. At least one of the Canada's initiatives seems similar to this. Now whether the FBI followed threw with this or no, I don't know.
Michael Geist comes out every once in a while with a "The Sky is Falling!" piece about how government is trying to super-regulate the Internet in Canada or some other country.
It's sensationalist crap for the purpose of selling impressions on the websites he writes for.
The hairbrained proposals that some lobbyists are putting forth in Canada are real, but there's little danger of any of them being taken seriously and he knows that.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Hmm, hopefully our privacy commissioner will step up to the plate on this issue. A few weeks ago, Slashdot was trumpeting the privacy commissioner as a good thing for Canada - now I see a few other posters desparaging Canada. This is good, but hopefully if people raise enough awareness (the Star article will help), and word gets out things can change.
Our government bowed to public pressure with respects to the American ballistic missile defence programme, and they'd bow to any sort of pressure towards the ISPs with regards to this. Of course, it can't hurt to let the privacy commissioner know that people care about this issue.
Privacy Commissioner: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Hi there
In Russia, ISPs have to aborb the cost of providing monitoring to the FSB.
In the US, it's called CALEA (among other things).
Where's the proposed bills that would bring this into law? The journalist makes no mention of it.
Seems to be more along the lines of bitching about VoIP services. The Canadian privacy commission would never allow this to go through.
Canada is not the Utopia that Slashbots love to make it out as!!! What's next? Are we going to find out that Europe is the same? My word, what will we ever do? Is this the end of Milhouse?
Time to make a tinfoil tuke.
if its anything like my older brother is like we have nothing to worry about. ah yes the memories of total lack of caring.
Even if this ever made it to parliament, it definitely would never pass. Something as controversial as this would be suicide for a minority government, and we've already seen that Martin is being extra-careful.
I lived in Vancouver, BC for a couple of months a few years ago. I follow politics in the U.S actively and when I was in Canada I read the Globe and Mail everyday. From what I could tell, the government in Canada gets what it wants and the Canadian public rarely engages in succesfull political activism. Quebec is an exception, but as far as I could tell, the whole sucession thing was about language and cultural issues. I can't understand why but the general public in Canada is absolutely docile about all things political. Perhaps it's that the newspapers and the CBC seems to generally ignore, obfuscate and smooth over any internal political controversies.
Article Mirror:
http://www.hotflip.net/mirror.htm
73! -KB3MGR
Speaking as a student living in Canada and using Canadian broadband, I highly approve of this move by our most excellent and intelligent government! They truly are a wonderful bunch of beautiful and caring people!
psst... End-Say Elp-Hay Ow-Nay!
Somewhere in the West, ca. 1806. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are hiding together behind a rock to escape a withering field of arrows fired by a hostile tribe of Native Americans.
Lone Ranger: "Wow, we're sure facin' a lotta them Injuns!"
Tonto: "What you mean 'we', paleface?"
~wavylines as we fast-forward two centuries~
Somewhere in Cyberspace, ca. 2006. A techie and a legislator are hiding together behind a firewall. Beyond the firewall are piles of blogs, spam, pr0n, and lobbyist- and law-enforcement sponsored counterproposals of varying degrees of stupidity.
Techie: Is this really what we want our Internet to be?
Legislator: What you mean 'our', taxpayer?
I guess there's always Australia.
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Read the above posts. All democratic countries have screwballs lobbying for this kind of stuff. It would be suspicious if this stuff was NOT out in the open.
whose geekier citizens take such glee, here on slashdot, in saying what an evil, Orwellian place the U.S. is? Surely not. Couldn't be. Nah.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
By the way, here in the U.S., schools (and everybody else) can freely surf my website. I guess you canuck educators will have to send me a check. Just remember, it was your idea.
See what I've been reading.
That the U.S. isn't as bad as the slashdotters say, and Canada isn't so great?
You're only half right. Canada isn't so great.
Yeah, I know. My point was that this puts some of the U.S.-bashing we've heard recently into perspective. As you say: `` All democratic countries have screwballs lobbying for this kind of stuff.'' It's not just the U.S.
See what I've been reading.
If you like high taxes, low healthcare quality, and knowing that your country selectively applies its laws to groups of folks that it doesn't like, then you'll love Canada!
Canadian taxes are high because so many services are supplied by the government, healthcare being the most notable. The average quality of healthcare in Canada is actually quite high, but past a certain point (measured in cost), healthcare services aren't available, or they're available randomly (in order to be fair to everyone, because everyone paid for the healthcare system). If think you may have cracked your wrist, or are worried about your cholesterol, then go in for an X-ray or blood test. The doctors are required to see you. Same thing goes if you think you're coming down with a head cold. If you're having heart troubles or need serious surgery to replace an organ, forget about it: you're probably going to die as a victim of the Canadian Healthcare Low Pass Filter. Common, easily treatable illnesses are cheaply treated, and so they are quickly treated. More expensive procedures simply are not done. The system couldn't support them all, it isn't fair to support just some, so you or your child will die knowing that the doctors didn't even try doing all they could. You can't even buy top quality healthcare in Canada--it's illegal. Your best chance is to be rich and move to America or Europe, because Canada has smoothed you out.
Note that some people don't mind this system. It's equivalent to having crappy insurance in the USA. You're betting against anything serious happening, and wouldn't really have the means available to get yourself fixed anyway. The difference is that if you work hard in the USA to provide for yourself, you can buy better healthcare. In Canada, this option is denied to you. In Canada, Patrick might've been dead by now (then again, he might not've. The treatment he needed was pretty cheap, although the testing involved was not (Hey Pat, I've heard on the news at least twice about how ``some doctors believe the mist from electric toothbrushes could get into people's lungs,'' but I didn't hear any attribution).). He certainly didn't travel to Canada for treatment.
Canadian healthcare is like a front-line MASH hospital in a war. If they can fix you, they will. If it's too hard or too expensive, they'll fix two other guys with less expensive ailments. Your life depends on government-spun fate. You'd have been just as well off being a wine-o as a teacher for all the good it does you in Canada's eyes.
The internet does not easily recognize national boundaries. If someone wants something that they can't legally get in their country, they'll just go to a domain hosted in a country where they can get it.
To some degree, this is bad. It means that things like kiddie porn get made available. It also means that there are loopholes around copyrights and so on.
But, on another level, the internet is the bastion of freedom! It allows people in places where opinions are regulated to see that there are people in other places who can actually think and express themselves. Totalitarianisim can't really last for long because of this. Although many of us, myself included, think that kiddie porn is an inimaginable crime, I think that the benefits of a free internet outweigh the drawbacks.
The internet is today a sort of wild-West environment. Not much regulation and lots of hiding places for bad guys. I'm sure that will change with time, just like the wild-West did.
It will probably take some sort of I-Gov to bring the 'net into line with laws and regulations. I don't know if I am ready for that yet (or should I say the net is ready for that). This will be the result of a maturing process that will take time.
As a Canadian, I don't see this as flamebait! Only expected ;)
Canada has the Internet?? Weird, eh.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. -- Michel de Montaigne
Thank you Micheal Geist, for blowing something this routine out of proportion.
Thankfully, Canada has one of the most online governments on the planet. Here's exactly what they, and the public that responded to the governement, had to say about the Lawful Access updates. Of particular note is the Privacy Commissioner's comments:
The law isn't going to pass if it doesn't meet those criteria, among others. I honestly don't see a problem. The only reason that this update is going through is to ensure that law enforcement have the same abilities, irregardless of the technology. They can already intercept telephone and fax communications lawfully, this just ensures tehy can do the same with TCP/IP traffic.
But I thought it was the U.S. with the totalitarian, authoritarian government?
Who do you think is pressuring them to do this?
The same people who pressured them to go face-recognition on their passports, that's who.
"Nice economy you got there, wouldn't any trade disputes to happen to it... lots of border crossings too. It'd be a shame if someone were to crack down and have every single vehicle searched, really..."
to escape the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft religious right-wing fascists
Yeah, 'cause these guys sure stay put at home, they don't meddle in other countries' affairs! No siree Bob! No nation building or vague threats or "repercussions" to neighbouring countries for those guys! No way!
Sigh.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm comin home next month... Don't put the wall up yet!!!!
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
The site is called "Eh-wire"... good stuff
http://onticfusion.sytes.net/
Well I guess a lot of Americans will be returning to the south of the border.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
First, Canadians have the Electronic Privacy Act, as well as constitutional protections against a lot of the ideas in the article.
...
Second, there's no link to the bill, and anyone can say anything they want in a newspaper or opinion piece, because Canadians have something so sorely missing in the USA, aka Freedom of the Press [caveat - unless it's an article disparaging a certain person who owns most of their newspapers].
Third, while Canucks may tend not to fuss once something becomes law, they DEFINITELY do not just roll over when a government tries to impose things on them. The first use of the railways and machine guns was to put down the Riel rebellion. And they have had way more protests - and successful ones - than we have here in the USA.
But, hey, what do I know, I only lived there from the age of 13 to 29
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
this puts some of the U.S.-bashing we've heard recently into perspective. As you say: `` All democratic countries have screwballs lobbying for this kind of stuff.'' It's not just the U.S.
The point is that to the rest of the world they are screwballs. To you they are mainstream and pass those laws!
Sometimes it seems you guys will vote for anything if it's got a star spangled flag waving in the background.
You can't take the sky from me...
If the government is going to keep track of my goings on, I should be able to keep track of what the government is doing. Let us not be one sided. Level the playing field. Fair is fair.
So what is the difference, then, between the way universal health care works in Canada and the way it works in various European countries (e.g., France and Germany)?
Exactly, you lived there during an age in which you were more busy playing video games or getting drunk than participating in politics. Secondly, the US Constitution has far more protections against the sort of things occuring in Canada than the Canadian constitution. That hasn't prevented our politicians and judges from ignoring those challenges. Oh Canada, consider yourself screwed.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Is that why this has been proposed and subsequently derailed for THREE YEARS, mainly from the vehement objections of ISPs, telecommunications companies and civil libertarians? Also, the article is completely wrong about warrantless access to data. Yes, data retention would be required but a warrant would be required to access any of the information. The intention is to create a legislative and technological parallel to what already exists for telephone tapping. It's not a cake walk to obtain a warrant either, you have to prove that you cannot acquire the information any other way.
I don't have time for search for links, but this issue has been in the news off and on since late 2001 and with a minority government is probably headed nowhere.
Secondly, the US Constitution has far more protections against the sort of things occuring in Canada than the Canadian constitution.
That's because we have other laws as well, like PEPIDA, which our justices, if not the Gov't respect.
the Canadian public rarely engages in succesfull political activism. Quebec is an exception, but as far as I could tell, the whole sucession[sic] thing was about language and cultural issues.
A tradition of successfull political activism is part of the culture.
There's a student strike right now. The education minister said he didn't understand why the students would do that over a 103 million cut in scolarships, "they're the best-treated students in the country!" he excliamed. Yeah, that's 'cause they don't lie down when you start cutting, you dumbass.
You can't take the sky from me...
In the name of God why?
Why go out of your way to make things more costly for educational institutions than they already are? Did I miss the point where Canadian schools were suddenly given more money than they knew what to do with and were eagerly seeking a way to spend more in order toobtain what they already had?
Seriously what possible reason could there be for this?
I'm outraged by this as a Canadian Citizen! Why, if this passes I'll have to move to Can... where does a Canadian move when his govenment starts going crazy for power?
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
our government may discuss shit like this, but that's far different from actually enacting it.
For some reason, the Canadian Center for Inland Waterways is crawling my pages. I should send a bill to my government every month.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
It may be flamebait, but he is basically right. The more government tends to its citizens' various needs, the more power it will exercise over them.
- If this law can pass, the law to render retroactively illegal something you already do can pass to.
- Technically, you break the law when you recieve kiddie/bestial porn spam. Once it's in your possession, you're breaking the law.
file trading (including music) is entirely legal in CanadaIt's not. It's... loopholy, for now.
You can't take the sky from me...
So what is the difference, then, between the way universal health care works in Canada and the way it works in various European countries (e.g., France and Germany)?
A lot of those countries still have real live nobles kicking around, who are untouchable by the law, richer than any Middle Eastern oil guy, and have lots of non-nobility friends who aren't quite as rich. They aren't going to leave Europe for serious healthcare problems, and they aren't going to suffer the hassle of being denied healthcare when they have the money to buy anything they want.
Because of this, the European countries are hurting badly for money. They've got upcoming financial problems that will be as a disemboweling to the stubbed toenail that is the worst of the predictions of the USA's social security problems. Canada routinely has a surplus, which equates to ``somebody in Canada died, and the government had more dimes to spend on trying to save them.''
Note that I'm not entirely against the notion of universal healthcare, but there are many caveats to my thinking. I'd love to treat every sick person; it's just a matter of finding the money to do it; however, I'm not willing to donate cash to some transexual's HIV drugs because he wanted to catch AIDS so that he didn't have to worry himself to death over when he was going to catch AIDS (search for `bug chasing'). This is especially true when that cash would be better saved against the time I (or my family) am in serious need of healthcare. I worked hard to earn it, after all. I worked hard through school and protected my brain to get to the point where I am. I don't want my gains going to someone who pickled his brain away before he was old enough to smoke tobacco legally.
And make no mistake about it, if you put an all encompassing safety net under some people, they'll jump from any height. The level of self destructive behavior going on in the world today is downright frightening, and I didn't work so hard just so I could pay for the backlash of this. It's their right to engage in self-destructive behavior, but when everyone is paying for it, it's harming everyone.
Don't believe everything the U.S. private health insurance industry tells you. Expensive or complex procedures are commonly done on a waiting list basis, "first come, first serve" basis, not randomly as you imply. As for organ replacement, it has the same limitations as the U.S., namely the organs go to whomever was on the waiting list the longest, and many people, wealthy or not, do die on the waiting list in both our countries because it's also illegal to buy organs in the U.S., and I see little done to change that.
Canadian health care is not nearly as bad as you've been led to believe. So, please stop misleading others.
In Europe, it's legal to go to a private clinic when the waiting lists at the public one are too long. In Canada, it's illegal. Don't like that your grandmother has to wait 8 months for her hip replacement on the public system? You've gotta be rich enough to get her to the US for treatment if you want to help out; illegal to get the private service in Canada.
They already have legislation that dictates what free speech is and isn't (veiled as 'hate speech' legislation).
http://http//fromthemorning.blogspot.com
[FromTheMorning]
Of course not. We both have problems with ultra-conservative nutbars. The biggest difference is that in Canada we delegate them to the radio or proposing legislation that will never pass. In the U.S., they're elected to run the country.
Policitcally active is one thing, being a public coward is something else.
The military was over twice as big in the 80s and there wasn't a draft. A draft is not an option in today's political climate, unless China invades Japan or some such. Read up and learn and stop listening to your profs, which are mostly just rejects from the 60s and 70s.
If you are scared of the draft, then you've also got global warming, acid rain, ozone holes, asteroid strikes, killer viruses -- you're gonna have a very nervous existence. Might be better just to join up now and get it over with.
Canada has no problem chucking the constitution in the trash and rewriting it whenever they see fit. (Meech lake, et al). There's nothing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to stop any of these proposals.
They've done it more than a few times in the past. They try to do it every time a bunch of vocal racists in Quebec start piping up about the special priveledges they feel they deserve.
The US Constitution gets amended. The Canadian one gets rewritten.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And you thought America was creepy!
As much as you seem to think it's the equivilant to soviet russia, last time I checked I was still allowed to emigrate.
Hold, on there buckaroo.
It may not be that simple. If, for example you move to Ontario, you will have to register for OHIP to replace your existing provincial health insurance coverage. Read the application forms carefully: you have to agree to live in Ontario permanently. You could chose to not participate in OHIP, of course, but then you can't purchase private health insurance for things that OHIP covers: that's illegal for a Canadian citizen to do. And, your taxes will still be funding (a horribly broken) system from which you've excluded yourself from receiving even minimal benefit.
So, no, Canada does not prevent emigration, but, in many cases it makes it illegal. Even here, the law is not really enforced, but as the tax base is eroded by people leaving to work in the U.S., it has become more and more difficult to leave in a strictly legal fashion.
Furthermore, it's sneaky. To survive, many Canadians have to take advantage of programs that require immediate reimbursement if they become non-residents. For example, RRSP HBPs become repayable in full within 60 days of becoming non-resident, or subject to being included in income. One the surface it seams reasonable that if the government provides a tax break, one should stick around for ones taxes to "repay the favour", as it were. However, many people have to take advantage of similar plans precisely because they're taxed so heavily and could otherwise not live a normal life. (Yes, I know that home ownership is considered a bourgois luxery in Canada, and not normal. I disagree.) Of course, once resident, one remains heavily taxed, and trapped.
This is particularly severe for traditional families where one spouse works and the other raises the children without resorting to government subsidized mediocre day care: there is no joint tax filing as there is in the U.S., so single-income families pay astronomical income taxes compared to their American counterparts.
There is also the Canadian tradition of holding an individual enslaved to the state to "repay" any social benefit they may have received at some time in the past over and over and over again. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars do I have to repay to make up for a CA$10k government scholarship I foolishly accepted in the 1980s. I thought that three was more than enough.
If the government services were on a par with the taxes paid, it would not be so bad, from a pragmatic standpoint (even as the libertarian in me gags at the stench of the notion of any tax). But, Canadian government services are among the most inefficiently delivered ones there are.
You could've hired me.
You imply:
- that I am wrong,
- that you are right, and
- that I am intentionally misleading others.
The third item is certainly untrue. I seek to enlighten. As for the first and second items, these are the purpose of debate, not mudslinging like you did.Don't believe everything the U.S. private health insurance industry tells you.
You have no idea where my facts come from. You make assumptions based off of your prejudices.
Expensive or complex procedures are commonly done on a waiting list basis, "first come, first serve" basis, not randomly as you imply.
Whether or not you can get the procedure you need is entirely random. It's not based on how hard you've worked to provide for yourself, it's not (truly) based on how badly you need the procedure, and it's not based on the resources available to this world to provide you with the procedure. It's based on whether the government is willing to pay for it and whether the resources would be better used curing anyone else. It's effectively random.
As for organ replacement, it has the same limitations as the U.S., namely the organs go to whomever was on the waiting list the longest, and many people, wealthy or not, do die on the waiting list in both our countries because it's also illegal to buy organs in the U.S., and I see little done to change that.
Firstly, it's a very good thing organs are illegal to sell. I can't imagine how much sorrow that market would cause. Secondly, organs are bought and sold on the black market all the time. Money buys anything, unfortunately.
Spare organ supply is much, much lower than the demand, and there'll always be people who die waiting on an organ; however, here in the US, there are innovations on this front. A functional liver can be regrown from a part of a donor's liver, leaving both with working livers. Artificial hearts have been implanted, extending lives for hours. The signs are that they'll be used to extend lives for years, eventually.
In Canada, these operations (and others like them) are available to you based on how many resources the government has to spend. How much of a syphilis outbreak would it take to to keep you from getting an operation you needed? The point is that in the USA you can work hard, take care of yourself, and purchase healthcare to help protect yourself. In Canada, you're not allowed to.
Oh, the irony. Yes, although there are Canadian content laws and a government funded national TV and radio station(s), it's ironic that it's the U.S. in which the media is the governments "bitch" as a compliant outlet for government propaganda. The rules and regulations in place to keep the Canadian government from using its own funded media for that purpose seem to do a better job at keeping the media "free" than the so-called independant media in the U.S. I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would have to say about that.
Well I would hope that Canada wouldn't have the exact same Constitution as that that the US signed some couple of centuries ago. I would suggest that you educate yourself ever so slightly before commenting on something you evidently know very little about (which begs to question your credibility on your other posts). Canada has something called the 'Charter of Rights and Freedoms'. And I quote from the chart: 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; 8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. So please, spare us of your ignorance next time.
In Canada, these operations (and others like them) are available to you based on how many resources the government has to spend. How much of a syphilis outbreak would it take to to keep you from getting an operation you needed? The point is that in the USA you can work hard, take care of yourself, and purchase healthcare to help protect yourself. In Canada, you're not allowed to.
Wrong. American doctors are quite happy to take our money if we have it. As well, a good 1/2 of my taxes go to providing excellent, universal health care - not stellar, but excellent.
Besides you being sucked in by the "everyone will get ahead if they just work hard" BS that your government feeds you, we do get expensive, critical treatments when we need them if our life is threatened. We even jump ahead in the queue if needs be.
IOW, if you're a poor Canadian and you're stricken by a serious, life threatening illness, you get the help you need. In the US, if you're poor and you're stricken by a serious, life threatening illness, you die.
I prefer our solution, thank you very much.
Were Gonna be watchin you, eh.
"Those who choose to avoid politics give their tacit consent to the very real probability of being governed by someone less intelligent than them."
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
"If you're having heart troubles or need serious surgery to replace an organ, forget about it: you're probably going to die as a victim of the Canadian Healthcare Low Pass Filter."
That's such bullcrap. If you actually knew someone who's had major surgery to save their life you'd know you are wrong. Really, it's the opposite of what you say. Small things may be put off, such as if someone comes in with a fractured wrist that's not dangling by a vein, and someone comes in with a heart attack you better believe they're going to treat the heart attack guy first.
You should do some more research before you call someone ignorant. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is quite different from the US Constitution (and its Bill of Rights), especially in that the the former is easily circumvented when deemed justifiable. Perhaps you should have read section 1 of it:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
This specific clause has been used repeatedly in court to nullify the rights and freedoms supposedly guaranteeed by the charter.
And the government is gonna make schools pay millions for access to the internet? The same government who fully funds those schools?
Article is quite weird, but then again crazier things have happened.
Whatever stuff you and Ann Coulter are smoking... you should really share.
Your "points", where not incomplete are completly incorrect.
Read the application forms carefully: you have to agree to live in Ontario permanently.
Do you mean this form?
Um, no shit you have to live in Ontario permanently. As opposed to say, living in Quebec and renting an apartment in Ottawa for the weekend, then claiming both OHIP and Quebec Health Benefits? That form seems simple enough to me if you keep your idology in check. Permanent as in primary residence, not forever. There's a huge section of "returning to Ontario". Duh.
Canada does not prevent emigration, but, in many cases it makes it illegal.
In light of your misreading of the simple OHIP form, I think you need to elaborate on this statement.
For example, RRSP HBPs become repayable in full within 60 days of becoming non-resident, or subject to being included in income
You're correct, I would consider this "fair". You can't possibly suggest that it isn't because you feel overtaxed. Again, you fail to support your argument. RRSP have that second "R" in them for a reason. The gov't is trying to get you to save for retirement, not issuing a tax break. How you interpret the plan is not their fault.
there is no joint tax filing as there is in the U.S
I'm not familiar with US tax law, but if your spouse was a stay-at-home type, then he/she would pay no tax at all in Canada, and you could claim the spousal amount. If you put all your savings into both RRSP's and RESP's for your kids, you'd be paying some pretty low taxes I'm sure. If you were smarter and opened of a small business, you could write off your spouse as an employee if she did your books, then write off the car you leased, etc etc.
When you get down to it,US citizens pay less tax than Canadian however you look at it, so it's kind of silly to compare individual structures.
How many hundreds of thousands of dollars do I have to repay to make up for a CA$10k government scholarship I foolishly accepted in the 1980s
I have no idea what the heck you're on about here...Are you suggesting the only benefit you received from the gov't was a scholarship? Are you suggesting you shouldn't repay a student loan?
I'm not sure what you're talking about really.
If the government services were on a par with the taxes paid, it would not be so bad,
I suppose it's a matter of perspective... clearly, certain events in my family's history would have left us broke had we been without publicly provided health care. (Which in the US, a the son of a single mother of 3 we would have, certainly.)
As someone who made use of that helping hand and now sits quite confortably on the other side of the fence I have no problems contributing to our services. Did you factor in lower crime and higher quality of life into your "pragmatic" calculations?
"I worked hard through school and protected my brain to get to the point where I am. I don't want my gains going to someone who pickled his brain away before he was old enough to smoke tobacco legally."
That's a very reasonable point of view. But I would like to point out that sometimes your tax money is spent saving the life of someone who deserves to live *more* than you do.
Frankly, as someone who lives in a country with unviersal free healthcare, it's 100% worth any inefficiencies and quirks purely because it makes life easier, simpler and more pleasant. Private companies are out to get your money, treating you is incidental. The Government wants to keep you alive and happy, so you'll vote for them.
Living in Canada in a rural area (even by Canadian terms) I rarely see a police car much less anyone who IDs for liquor, or strangers. I doubt a system of constantly watching rural areas for those terrorists that are terrorizing farms, would be financially feasible. I mean our government's party is called "Liberal" but that does not mean they are liberal enough to let a system, especially an independantly controlled one be set up for the government or private company usage.
Ever since the installment of the Patriot Act, Canadians had a sort of hushed wait for their version which came and never was really implemented. Due to the recent tragedy involving 4 shot mounties it appears to be the "Reichstag" in the unravelling of these "Big Brother" type surveillance and systems of control.
But in reality, atleast in Canada this system will not work because most Canadians on their own will spot any kind of thing going on, and with the lack of manpower they better start to invest trust in the common citizen rather than turn them against each other with idiotic ways of monitoring us all.
Since when was the citizen corrupt enough to warrant monitoring from the government?
Kind of like a group of criminals to watch over a public school.
We should be the ones with a Little Brother system monitoring the government, tattletailing every time they do something wrong..now if only we could convince someone to hand out punishment.
[cx]
if the govt would actually put the money where their mouth is.
One thing the govt doesn't do is shell out the cash where it is needed. Unless you think another golf course is needed.
Seriously, just because someone is trying to regulate the internet doesn't mean that they're eventually going to impose draconian measures to limit access to free information.
The internet is now somewhat of an economic center, and one of the oldest functions of government is to regulate trade. It doesn't mean there's some huge conspiracy to destroy the free internet. If you're worried about the course these things may take, be careful who you elect and what internet services you subscribe to.
All this FUD about big brother is really starting to get a bit absurd, and it only encourages journalists when stories like this get a big reaction. Is it so hard to just say that some people are trying to regulate the internet? Why does it always have to be some big huge deal that's going to destroy the world?
The government doesn't decide on a case by case basis whether it is too expensive to treat someone. That happens in other countries like NZ, but not in Canada.
I would submit that anyone who knows anything about our army would tell you that the quality of our troops and their training are among the best in the world.
Regular Canadian troops are on par individually with high level US ones. Even American commanders will tell you that.
Nevertheless, if the objective was to secure the bridge they were blockin
Once again you're slightly off. Oka was the main issue, and it had nothing to do with a bridge. Your "bridge" was the Mercier Bridge near montreal, which was blockaded by others as a show of support.
Finally, this isn't some fucking invasion of germany! The Mohawk were fucking fellow Canadian citizens (legality and treaty status aside)!
The army was called out in support of the public institution, the same way they were called out to help with flodds in Manitoba, or to perform Search and Rescue. Their mission was not to attack and destroy the Blockade. Their mission was to effect a solution with a minimum loss of life on both sides.
They accomplished their mission in textbook fashion. To suggest that the outcome could have been "better" with bloodshed speaks a great deal to your (lack of) character.
Have you even considered that no matter who does the counting, it would be difficult to be elected without Quebec's seats?
And Quebec is french, and constantly on about their unique culture, and the second largest (pop wise) in canada...
Sometimes.. the simplest answer is the correct one.
I don't know if I'm creative enough to come up with it, but I'm sure someone here on slashdot will enlighten us with the connection.
"Lawful Access", "Clear Skies", "No Child Left Behind", etc. Governments everywhere are getting better and better at Orwellian double-speak, but the main lesson we're learning is that when you get people in power, all they want is to stay in power. Pretty pathetic. It would be nice to see a government that had the best interests of the governed at heart, but that's not going to happen as long as human beings are involved.
(Damn, I overdosed on my cynicism pills this morning!)
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
The last time I checked, the Meech Lake accord did not pass.
They've done it more than a few times in the past. They try to do it every time a bunch of vocal racists in Quebec start piping up about the special priveledges they feel they deserve.
The Meech Lake Accord did not pass. The Charlottetown Accord did not pass. Your post is a bunch of mistruths, ad hominem attacks, and FUD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottetown_Accord
Good Sir, welcome to my foe list.
Don't Americans use the word touque?
Everything will be taken away from you.
Just so you know, that's how they started out here, too. You do have the advantage of seeing our bad example.
Oh wait...Patriot Act.
Nevermind.
Meech Lake was not ratified, so using it as an example is specious.
Calling Quebecois 'racist' for demanding cultural considerations as a minority in a country overwhelming english merely demonstrates your personal biases.
As for the US Consititution getting 'amended' vs Canada's being 'rewritten', its a matter of semantics. Personally, I find the religious reverence paid to the US Consitution laughable...its a document written 250+ years ago, hopefully SOMEONE in America has had some good ideas since then worth updating.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Mulroney is an English Canadian. Trudeau was half English. Paul Martin is English (well his mother Scottish and his father Franco Ontarian, which makes him half). Hmm, Kim Campell was English Canadian. Joe Clark was. Deifenbaker was. Nooooo, I see it now: you are a troll.
In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)
A handy FAQ for the tinfoil brigade.
Of special note:
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
No, it didn't pass.
But it could have.
The method for constitutional change in Canada is to rewrite it. That was my point, and that is the way it is, not FUD.
And, for the record, I think it's better than the American way: pretending that the founding fathers were gods and their words can never be undone.
Oh yeah, fuck you and your foes list. Noone cares.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
After reading the paper which much of his article was referring to he's blown things way out of proportion. Each issue lists multiple possible solutions, the options are provided by 3rd parties. The paper then recommends an option, the scary pro-CP options in his article have *gasp* not been recommended by the committee!
ISPs: recommended would need to do Notice & Take-down for copyright material stored on their facilities.
Semi-accurate. For a large part of the duration of the Vietnam conflict, you were subject to being drafted only during the year you turned 19. The military's manpower needs were divided into the number of presumably eligible males with that birth year, and then a "random" selection of birth dates (days) was made and ranked, so if they needed X00,000 people, and that was 1/3 of every guy turning 19 in, say, 1973, they'd rank all the days and give you a number. Your lottery number would determine whether or not you'd likely get drafted -- if your birthday came up #1, you were going, and if it came up #365, you'd go get stoned for a week in celebration. If you were in the #120-180 range, it was iffy. Ask any guy who was eligible and he'll tell you what his number was, even 30 years on.
Nixon ended the draft in 1973.
Its interesting to see that it worked (at least somewhat, somewhat despite a huge undergound movement of moonshine and imports of Canadian and Mexican liquor), and its also interesting that it was revoked later.
That's what a reasonable person would think, so I checked with OHIP. They wer quite snipety about "permanent", as in "never leave or pay all benefits back with administrative overhead". Damn, when my wife had emergency IV antibiotics administered on an outpatient basis, I had to pay CA$150 + $10 a page for the damn invoice to file with my insurer! The drugs and service were admitedly cheap at CA$750.
When my son was seen by a Canadian doctor, he only charged me CA$30 for an excellent job. I tipped him another US$100, and admonished him to "charge what he was worth and not prostitute his skill like a $5 whore." He was puzzled, but hapilly took the Benjamin.
If you do the math the HBP is not really as good a deal as it sounds, if you don't beleive me do some googling for some analysis...
It makes sense if you sock as much as you can in an RRSP to avoid a 53% marginal tax rate (I used to live in Quebec at one time), and otherwise can't save a downpayment: you get an interest free loan paid back with pre-tax dollars at the expense of RRSP contribution room that would otherwise grow at market rates of return. Natch, if you had the downpayment outside the RRSP, it would be stupid to raid it.
But, my point was that so much that repaying the RRSP was unfair, as it was that to live a normal life, Canadians have to entangle themselves in many things that make severigng residency hard: much more so than Americans (who can work outside the U.S. and exempt US$80k of foreign earned income and still retain an American home for when they return - Canadians remain tax residents if they own a home in Canada).
Firstly you don't repay scolarships you must be thinking of student loans
I was referring to the maddening Canadian attitude that if one ever got any kind of benefit from the government, like a scholarship, it was carte blance approval to be taxed for life so as to repay it "in spirit".
You could've hired me.
If this were happening in the USA, maybe it would matter. Not in Canada.
... protect our rights against what the lawmakers might try to do.
Why?
Because in Canada, when legislation is found to be in violation of the Constitution or Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the legislation is overturned. We have judges that actually do what they were meant to do
On the other hand, in the US, its perfectly fine, in fact downright encouraged to pass laws that take away even the most basic rights, with no regard whatsoever about any type of constitutionally gauranteed right. Judges are placed purly by political affiliation and pay back the government for their posting by ignoring rights where they see fit.
PATRIOT ACT!
You americans are living in 1930's Germany right now and don't even see it. Already thousands of American citizens have been held for days without charge, without being allowed to talk to a lawyer or even family, with no warrant and no probably cause. What a great way to treat your fellow citizens!
All because you let Dubya scare you. Take my rights away! Take my rights away! that will somehow protect me from the world!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Some guy crossed the border at a non-border crossing a month or so ago, up into Manitoba. He was denied legal entry because of a prior conviction. He was coming up to Canada to meet with a net-girlfriend.
He damn near froze to death.
(Wish I had a link to the story, but it's on a pay-only part of the Winnipeg Free Press site)
'Tony's Law' Would Require Marijuana Users To Inform Interested Neighbors
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
This is exactly what I mean. If I accept the CA$10k scholarship, it stands to reason that my increased income as a result of the better education should give rise to higher taxes that help repay that scholarship. Fair enough.
But, that does not mean, that if I pay an extra CA$5k a year in taxes because of the increased income due to my better education, after 5 years of those higher tax payments, I should still "owe" something to repay the scholarship. That translates into a usurous rate of interest.
A scholarship is not a loan: the grantor takes all the risk, but if it were to be viewed fairly as to what I "owe" in return, it should be compared to one at a rate of interest related to market rates and the risk that I would "default" on my education.
I believe I paid my dues in this particular regard, and have learned to shun all government "freebies", for they are handcuffs in disguise. I intend to refuse Canadian CPP, OAS, and U.S. SSI: depite being stolen from me against my will, I can't bring myself to support the stealing from others in kind.
You could've hired me.
"...all [parties] support the government's current legislation, which will decriminalize the possession and consumption of small amounts of pot." --"debated?"
Seems to me that the subject is pretty much settled, and I agree. Legalization would stir up the pot too much... so to speak. That's what politicians are supposed to do; control the flow of power. By giving an inch now, it leaves room to do more in the future without jumping in head first and making a bigger mess.
If Canada were to straight up legalize it, the international consequences would be impossible to ignore. American politicians already migrate to Canada on a regular basis to enforce their views on pot. I don't agree with that, but Canada is still the 'Little Brother'. It's wise to respect that, and accept the fact that now, you won't get jail time for a joint.
In the US the Bush administration is dismantling what is left of the New Deal social security provisions yet through the "Patriot act" it is excercising more and more power over them.
Canada shares with the US the fact that politicians can be bought and sold like pork belly futures. The CRIA is just trying to buy the key politicians in the Canadian government the way it buys Senators in the US and our dubious security services are trying to extend their control on the back of this, just the same as in the US. In Canada it is just not quite so blatant. Due to the fact we are a Parliamentary democracy not an elective monarchy like the US, it can make the government a little more responsive to the people's wishes. But even here democracy is dying like in the US our voter turnouts are falling rapidly and are now nearly as low as the abysmal level in the US.
Though in both cases it could be seen as an active refusal to a system that is failing to deliver on the real needs of people - but maybe that's over-optimistic.
You are right. The poll was 55%, and what's more, there seems to be a majority FOR the shield outside of Quebec. The various sources aren't too clean on where the support for missle defense lies, so I'm not going to pretend I know.
However, it does seem strange that the government did not make any commitments until this poll was released. All the coverage makes it look like there has been almost no communication between US and Canada in the past few weeks, so I can't think of another factor that caused the Liberals to suddenly announce they were against missle defense.
...No country has yet been bold enough to outlaw tinfoil!
I'm sure that's the final step.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Zundel case highlights the sheer hypocrisy of the government of Canada in terms of human rights. No a lot to expect there, either.
If nothing else, monitoring Canadian internet traffic might answer a question that has been plaguing the rest of the world for some time: what exactly is a "hoosier"?
I'm not sure I spelled that correctly, so bring on the spelling nazis...
Blank until
For every step that is taken to spy on people without reason, there will be a technical solution to solve the problem.
Freedom of speech is not the enemy. Freedom of speech has not been the motivator behind terrorist attacks. Rather, it's the lack of ideas caused by the lack of free speech that causes irrational, desperate and violent behavior.
To get around people "snooping" on my Internet communication, I use an online privacy proxy (specifically spynot.com) that encrypts all of my communication. That's the sort of technical solution that will stop Big Brother.
For now, I'm not too worried about my government (US), but I'm more worried about my workplace, which is intenet on keeping me out of my webmail out of a misguided notion that it's "bad." Free Speech is not bad- it's enlightning! When will we finally learn this?
Here you go: http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/03/07 /cold-sentence050307.htm
"Canada's rules for child pornography still require a court order before content is removed, yet if the Canadian Recording Industry Association and other well-funded interests get their way, the ISP will respond to a mere allegation of copyright infringement by "kicking the subscriber off the system."
Seems as though they're not that different from the US, both governments care more about who gives campaign donations then the people.
Personally, I can't WAIT until they install backdoors in all their routers. I've always wondered what canucks were up to - I imagine quite well I'll be spying on those very same government hosedogs who passed the crap using their own gear.
Idiots.
But it could have.
The method for constitutional change in Canada is to rewrite it. That was my point, and that is the way it is, not FUD.
Isn't that the way constitutional change is done in most places? Legislators make proposals according to the change mechanisms in those selfsame constitutions? Constitutional amendments on various things (flag burning, gay marriage) are often proposed in the United States, too.
Also, doesn't the fact that the amendments you cited didn't pass suggest something? Any law before the House and Senate could pass, but many don't--often due to either common sense or political self-preservation.
~Idarubicin
Over-taxation with or without representation isn't so hot either ... and in Canada - it is WITHOUT ...
Question Authority before IT questions You
Incidentally, I've done my part to help the health care industry, and the tax-payers ( of which I unfortunately ;) are one ) 39, and since childhood haven't been to a doctor ... there was that time in 88 when I walked on adrove a rusted metal spike through my foot, went to a clinic and got a tetanus shot, that has been my sole-usage of our health care system ... I'm in good shape, eat right, just quit smoking, walk a lot etc ... should I require some care in my old age / dotage, then, I have everry right to expect it ... I'm not like the vast majority, running to the emergency ward for every little sniffle ! This is what has been draining and destroying our health care system ... particularly the influx of foreigners ... there are millions more Ontario health cards than therre are citizens - how's that again ?
Question Authority before IT questions You
Buddy, you are full of shit. I just moved out of Ontario. I wasn't required to pay OHIP 'all benefits back with adminstrative overhead'. In fact I was covered for 3 months after moving.
For someone that claims to be a former Canadian you have some rather typical American misconceptions about Canada.
Oh and I loved the bit about tipping the Canadian doctor, but you forgot to say how he looked at it and said, "$100 dollars American? Now I can retire!!"
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible -W.B.
Uhm, I guess you've never actually read the Canadian Constitution then? The Constitution of Canada is not "rewritten", it is ammended, in accordance with the provisions laid out in Part V, as per section 38:
Subsection 3 even allows for the attachment of dissenting opinion.
Both Meech Lake and Charlottetown did not pass because they failed to meet the standards set forth in Section 38 - they were actually following the contitutional recipe for amendment.
So, in fact, your assertion IS FUD. But hey, don't let little things like facts get in the way of a good arguement...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Of course, facing bankrupcy for any illness is much better than getting "fixed", regardless of personal fortune. As for the MASH hospital style, nobody who has actually come in an hospital here would think that.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Their entire training revolves on ferretting out crime suspects and they are naturally suspicious of everyone who has not been anointed into policeness (which is plain silly, given the number of cops who perform crimes).
Yes, we should be vigilant, because the cops are inherently untrustworthy (why should we trust them if they don't trust us?), and make sure our member of parliament are fully aware that our legal tradition ALSO does not gives blind trust to the police, and that the Internet shall be treated NO DIFFERENTLY from the rest of society.
Mod parent up! This guy is spot-on correct.
Yeah, OK. The current market will just dry up overnight when 7-11 comes to market with crappy dope for twice the current street price. That'll work well.
It'll be cheaper and/or better or it won't go at all.
No Comment.
IOW, if you're a poor Canadian and you're stricken by a serious, life threatening illness, you get the help you need. In the US, if you're poor and you're stricken by a serious, life threatening illness, you die.
This is not entirely true. There are options for people like this who have no insurance, but there is no guarantee that if they don't have insurance that they will get treated. This is called incentive. We have hospitals here in the US that are free (charity hospitals, in fact, one of my sisters was born at one of them.) Many hospitals are obligated to take N ununsured patients each year. In addition to these options, decent Americans aren't going to sit around with other decent Americans die from curable ailments. If you don't have insurance for your child and your child needs an expensive prcedure done, you can always appeal to the public for help (many a time I have seen 'tip jars' in convenience stores to help out children who are sick and in need.)
In your country, healthcare is a right, but here it isn't a right. Why should I have to pay for someone else's drug habits? Why should you pay for the fact that my mom, even after having had a triple bypass, still continues to smoke? What sense does it make to have a right to wreck her body and have guaranteed healthcare?
I may sound like a cold-hearted person, but I'm not. I want to help people, I take pride in helping others, I just don't want to be forced to do it.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
"...financier and breeding ground of every major terrorist organization with the exception of the IRA..."
Don't forget the FLQ.
How did we get here from "privacy on the internet" anyway?
I wrote my MP the first time this was proposed, and again the second time it was proposed. Luckily he seems pretty sharp on some fronts, so I can probably leave him alone this third time.
It's going to come back over and over again, though. I always write the same thing: "I've got this software installed called Tor. It makes my online traffic completely private and anonymous, and it's free. I don't use it for everything, but I can easily switch. Please don't waste my tax dollars."
Maybe I'll just remind him ever five years.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Your interpretation of history in light of Paperclip is interesting, and reminds us of the depths which spy types are willing to plumb, but this list of plane crashes is silly. You're one paranoid step away from claiming that Bush hired bin Laden to rub out John O'Neill (whoever he is).
And I don't know what the "family tree" is meant to demonstrate in this context, beyond your willingness to stretch a point all the way to invisibility. Since The Conspiracy is everywhere, everything is evidence of The Conspiracy? Surely we can work the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in here, somehow.
Mind the Gap
My mother-in-law came to the US (Mayo) for the cancer that she has. They were treating her at home, but the treatment was sub-par, and being productive members of your society, they had the means to buy the care they wanted here in the US.
Careful, enough of that and your people may just decide that they could move 100 miles south and keep more of their money and have better healthcare. And if enough productive members of your society exercise their right to go where the cost of living is the lowest, the tax burden there is going to go way up. Remember, not everyone in Canada is a die-hard socialist or is die-hard anti-American.
If the US let anyone in Canada move south, do you think you could sustain your healthcare system? How many business owners and service providers there do you think would not choose to move south so that they could keep more of their money and have better services? When I first met my wife (who is Canadian), I recall her being resentful of the fact that the US was 'stealing' all of your hockey players. I wonder if the US allowed productive Canadians to move here if a similar thing would occur?
Why do I keep typing pythong?
There are many practical and usually shortterm exceptions. Look at it this way, a government isn't going to both provide you with healthcare and permit you to lie in a ditch with a needle in your vein.
Exactly, you lived there during an age in which you were more busy playing video games or getting drunk than participating in politics.
... but, I guess you must know more about my life than I do.
Strange, I seem to remember I was very active in politics, designed role-playing games, and had actively served in the Canadian Armed Forces (Army) for seven years
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The problem is that anybody that REALLY is doing something suspicious will of course use encryption or obfuscation when exchanging messages, so the idea of monitoring all communication is as hollow as it can be. The only thing that you may be able to prove is that some communication has occured, but if it was about some criminal activity or exchanging some stupid PowerPoint presentations, that is a completely different matter.
If anyone is suspected of criminal activities then that individual has to be monitored, but there are better ways to do that then to harvest internet traffic. I suspect that the majority of the internet traffic they actually will catch that is readable are spam, porn and /.-traffic.
Anyway, this is an example of a government that has misunderstood it's purpouse - The only reason it really exists is to serve the citizens, everything else is excess.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Well, it's an over-simplification, but in a nutshell European health care delivery tends to be done by private institutions which are publicly funded, whereas here in Canada 99% of the delivery is done by public institutions, with no private component (there are exceptions like doctor's offices, which are privately run operations).
For example, for all intents and purposes in a Canadian hospital everyone who works there is a govt. "employee." There are lots of exceptions, i.e. food services, janitorial etc., but generally anyone front-line is a govt. employee. Whereas in Europe you might be employed by Acme Hospitals inc. which is in turn funded by the government.
"The current market will just dry up overnight when 7-11 comes to market with crappy dope for twice the current street price. That'll work well."
If it's legal you could grow it, if it was legal it would be twice as good and half the price of street drugs... a blackmarket typical inflates prices, not decreases them...
Paraphrasing: Nazi Germany wasn't so bad: only a small percentage of the population was affected in a bad way.
You're playing dirty with statistics. Overall, the gap may be 5%, but for significant minority segments of society, it is much, much higher: single-income families, for example, can't file joint returns in Canada as they can in the U.S. That was the real killer for us.
Of course, the demographics show that such families are in the decline: it takes two parents to work (often, solely because of the income tax burden!). I've done the analysis (crudely, in a related post), and for this group of people, the difference between the tax burden in the U.S. and Canada is insane.
Even in the U.S., it's a little tough to support a family on one income, so those that can come here from Canada and do that tend to be highly skilled and command a premium wage. They generally commanded a comparable (though about 30% lower, on average) premium wage in Canada. However, the tax structure forces them to leave.
Canada is shooting itself in the foot with it's tax policies.
You are funny though. I read one of your previous posts about your C++ godliness. Then someone called you on your "prime numbers at compile time", and you provide "Well, some of those error numbers ARE prime numbers"
The referenced program does produce prime numbers in the error messages at compile time. GCC happens to intersperse many more warning messages -- not all C++ compilers do. You clearly miss the point: that this can be done at all is a testament to the likely Turing-completeness of the template metalanguage, the messy output notwithstanding.
If you saved your employer $10^9, good for you! You should get at least 1% of that as a bonus reward! Enjoy your cool $10 billion. Methinks your employer's accounting will be a little different though.
You could've hired me.
You even got the shinier side on the outside like any true believer should.
;-)
Given that highly-visible, powerful people with ties to the government are likely to be frequent flyers it isn't all that unusual that a number of them would see their demise on an airplane. I'm sure you could compile a list of Republican/right-wing people of note who died in plane crashes as well. I guess it's just hard to imagine Bill Clinton orchestrating anything like that, given his repurtation as uhhh...a lover and not a fighter
As for the "presidential cousins"--you listed President Taft, and his senatorial son and granson as "cousins". The Bush family is far from royalty, and even royalty isn't inbred enough that a man, his son and his grandson could all be FIRST cousins--it is quite obvious that you consider cousins to be any people who share a traceable ancestral link. Well, that makes Orville and Wilbur Wright my "cousins" (I am more closely related to them than GWBush is to Kerry actually).
I guess since my "cousin's" invention was used as an instrument of murder by Bush and his Republican cronies that makes me part of a conspiracy...In any case, thank you for the most entertaining piece of paranoid conspiracy theory I've come across since Farenheit 911. I am thoroughly amused.
well aside from the fact that youre clearly an idiot, youre quite welcome.
The point that I made, had you possibly read all my posts in this thread was that the *density* of political figureheads found in one particular family tree is significant.
your closing paragraph is contrived to make you feel mentally superior to me, but the fact is it does nothing against the argument that I made whereby I point out some odd anomolies which are all documented fact.
Try looking around a bit and you will see that there are many books and sites that document the presidentail relations in the same family tree.
its wonderful how you use the term "paranoid conspiracy theory" in direct connection to F9/11 and my post. I stated that I feel that Moore is a tool of propaganda, but I am sure that this would be over your head just as I am sure that you likely feel that we actually are served by the "two party system" here in the US.
feel free to deny any of the things that I said, I dont care. I think these are suspicious connections that are fully and adequately documented and that I have spent some time looking at. You on the other hand are typing in a knee jerk reactionary post to information that you likely have never thought of let alone spent any real time looking into. and I am sorry, but 5 minutes on google looking at the links that appear on just the first page doesnt count as "research" so dont use that as your measure.
good luck to you.