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Kovnik, I want to be clear: I like Quebec. Montreal is one of the greatest cities in Canada because uniquely amongst all Canadian cities it is what Canada thinks it is. It's bilingual, liberal, socialist, multicultural, insane with the hockey and...... cold. All of our ideals and stereotypes perfectly captured. The rest of Quebec actually contains the majority of our young country's history.

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

Pages ago you cited some reasons for separation that honestly, were ludacris. You had to dig deep for those and mainly I'm sad you felt you needed to do that. Despite what you say Quebecois are exactly like the rest of Canadians (hockey surprising popular in other provinces too!) except in one important way. Religon and politics are often cited as big dividers of people but one thing that divides people like no other is language. If people can't talk to each other the first step to understanding each other is lost.

French is supposed to be this great language and of course it is. It's one of the world's great languages but if it's only used as a divider is it? Is anything? There is more to French than this, there has to be. French should be part of the rich tapstry that makes up Quebec and Canada's culture. A important way in which individual Quebecois indentify themselves. I hope it means a lot more to you than just some wall to throw up between you and me and Francophones and Anglos. That's what it should never be.

"Footage showed a high-powered rifle, which Twitter users identified as an AK-47 or Valmont Hunter weapon."

What the hell is wrong with our society when news sites are using TWITTER to figure out what the weapon was.

I think this bugs me almost as much as the attempted shooting.

Also, as a person who works as a stagehand, literally doing the exact same job the guy who got shot was doing, this is really chilling for me. Had this been a job down near Kentucky, I could've easily been one of the guys that gunman would have run into first. Those back stage areas are always packed full of people. The crowd is always super noisy, so it's hard to hear. Everyone is trying to be quiet so we're not picked up on the microphones. If that guy hadn't had his weapon jam, a lot more people would've died. He could've easily made it almost all the way to the stage if there wasn't good security presence. And there are so many areas you can hide with it being dark back there and what not. People are very lucky, this could have gone much, much worse.

Hope the family of that man is ok. They must be devastated right now.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Kovnik, I want to be clear: I like Quebec. Montreal is one of the greatest cities in Canada because uniquely amongst all Canadian cities it is what Canada thinks it is. It's bilingual, liberal, socialist, multicultural, insane with the hockey and...... cold. All of our ideals and stereotypes perfectly captured. The rest of Quebec actually contains the majority of our young country's history.

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

Pages ago you cited some reasons for separation that honestly, were ludacris. You had to dig deep for those and mainly I'm sad you felt you needed to do that. Despite what you say Quebecois are exactly like the rest of Canadians (hockey surprising popular in other provinces too!) except in one important way. Religon and politics are often cited as big dividers of people but one thing that divides people like no other is language. If people can't talk to each other the first step to understanding each other is lost.

French is supposed to be this great language and of course it is. It's one of the world's great languages but if it's only used as a divider is it? Is anything? There is more to French than this, there has to be. French should be part of the rich tapstry that makes up Quebec and Canada's culture. A important way in which individual Quebecois indentify themselves. I hope it means a lot more to you than just some wall to throw up between you and me and Francophones and Anglos. That's what it should never be.

Exalted! Standing ovation!

I thought you couldn't say it better than before but I was wrong. I'm not sure what values underlying secession could be more urgent or noble than these for unity. I doubt there are any.

Kovnik Obama wrote:And, for some reason, the fact that teenage mothers are like a dime a dozen in Alberta. Seriously.

I second this opinion.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

 Goliath wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
How can that Saskatchewan factoid be true? It must be against federal law...

I think they can still teach French if they wish to, it seems like its there to stop local over meant going "you are going to teach French lessons to these kids" even if there was no will or need to do

Just so you know the way it works in Canada is that everyone outside of Quebec must learn French in school but it's illegal to teach English in Quebec.

This is two different kinds of wrong. English is a mandatory class in Quebec; and Saskatchewan students are not required to learn any French.

Alright, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under the impression if your family is Francophone or you immigrate to Quebec you must go to a French school - by law.

I have no idea what's going on in Saskatchewan....y'know, like most people.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

Because, as they most likely see it, they see their continued being part of Canada as the slow agonizing death of their own country and culture. I suppose that they should be thankful that Canada isn't as 'proactive' in the demise of Quebec as some countries are (ask the Basques, or the Roma, or the Irish, or Native Americans outside Canada). However, if they want ot stand up and fight for it, one way or another, I fully support them.

Are you comparing Quebec to what happened to the Native Americans, to the Irish, and to centuries of persecution of the Roma, and them being part of the genocide in WWII?

Are Quebecois being forced into ghettos or camps, having their language actively extinguished, or being killed by their government?

BaronIveagh wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

Because, as they most likely see it, they see their continued being part of Canada as the slow agonizing death of their own country and culture. I suppose that they should be thankful that Canada isn't as 'proactive' in the demise of Quebec as some countries are (ask the Basques, or the Roma, or the Irish, or Native Americans outside Canada). However, if they want ot stand up and fight for it, one way or another, I fully support them.

First: Quebec is not a country.

Second: Canada encourages the upkeep of traditional cultures; in Canada the policy is not to destroy cultures, with one exception...

Third: Do not even try to compare the plight of the Quebecois to the Aboriginals in Canada. French culture in Canada has never been the victim of state-endorsed genocide. Aboriginal language and culture, on the other hand, has.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Because, as they most likely see it, they see their continued being part of Canada as the slow agonizing death of their own country and culture. I suppose that they should be thankful that Canada isn't as 'proactive' in the demise of Quebec as some countries are (ask the Basques, or the Roma, or the Irish, or Native Americans outside Canada). However, if they want ot stand up and fight for it, one way or another, I fully support them.

The comparisons you're attempting to draw are ridiculously obtuse. What's happening with respect to Quebec is what happens whenever to sufficiently distinct cultures interact closely. It happened in the early United States, and its been happening in Europe ever since those nations decided that war wasn't good for them.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Kovnik, I want to be clear: I like Quebec. Montreal is one of the greatest cities in Canada because uniquely amongst all Canadian cities it is what Canada thinks it is. It's bilingual, liberal, socialist, multicultural, insane with the hockey and...... cold. All of our ideals and stereotypes perfectly captured. The rest of Quebec actually contains the majority of our young country's history.

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

Pages ago you cited some reasons for separation that honestly, were ludacris. You had to dig deep for those and mainly I'm sad you felt you needed to do that. Despite what you say Quebecois are exactly like the rest of Canadians (hockey surprising popular in other provinces too!) except in one important way. Religon and politics are often cited as big dividers of people but one thing that divides people like no other is language. If people can't talk to each other the first step to understanding each other is lost.

French is supposed to be this great language and of course it is. It's one of the world's great languages but if it's only used as a divider is it? Is anything? There is more to French than this, there has to be. French should be part of the rich tapstry that makes up Quebec and Canada's culture. A important way in which individual Quebecois indentify themselves. I hope it means a lot more to you than just some wall to throw up between you and me and Francophones and Anglos. That's what it should never be.

+1,000,000
I have friends who are Quebecois and I love my Habs along with all the other great things Quebec culture brings to our great country.

But I'm getting sick and tired of the PQ always demanding more $$$ to support their utterly unviable socialist ideals like 'free everything', all the while going on and on about how hard done by they are and that Ottawa is seeking to stamp out French wherever it hides.

Let's face it, Harper already signed into law a few years ago that Quebec is a 'distinctly unique society within Canadian culture'. He pretty much gave Quebec the unique idenity it's wanted, while keeping all the many perks the province already recieves.
If people actually think Quebec will be better off as it's own distinct country, then fine. Enjoy being the 'new Greece' and don't come crying expecting a now foriegn government to bail you out!

 Mannahnin wrote:
Are you comparing Quebec to what happened to the Native Americans, to the Irish, and to centuries of persecution of the Roma, and them being part of the genocide in WWII?

Only in the broadest sense (though I have little doubt that I could find some people in the Western Provinces who would argue exactly that sort of 'solution' to the issue).

From the perspective of the separatists, being included in Canada is eroding and will eventually extinguish their culture. This is complicated by the perception that they were not given a say in the matter in 1982, more or less being forced into Canada against their will.

At the core, there are only three possible outcomes for their culture in the end: independence or extinction (in one form or another).

@Azreal: 1: patriotism does not require an existing recognized state. However, according to a non-binding statement from the Canadian government, yes, it is.
2: Official policy and practical outcome are two different things. Stopping homogenization without division is like trying to stop gravity while standing on the surface of a black hole. It's going to win in the end, eventually.
3: As a survivor and decedent of survivors of state sponsored genocide, the ultimate outcome is the same, it just lacks the immediacy of killing them all outright. It's the same sort of philosophy that ran the Carlisle Schools. Rather than engaging in horrific slaughter, slowly grind the culture away until there's nothing left.

@dogma: And, that makes it OK somehow? As far as Europe goes, have you been paying attention to what it has been causing, right? The steady rise of something called National Socialism? Remember them? They're back because of the stresses this has caused.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
First of all it's weird that brown bricks can't be used in your town but Quebec's language laws are obviously not just some aesthetic choice.

That's right, there's also a legal publicity question. In French Civil law, all for of advertisement is considered legally binding. It must thus all be in the legal language of the land. But it's mostly an aesthetical question, yes.

Not trying to overexaggerete but what I'm saying is everyone in Montreal speaks English. You're talking ethnic background.

I'm sure you've spent a hell of a lot of time in Monk, Longueil, Hochelaga and Laval when you were here? The vast majority of what's outside Westmount, the Mile-End and St-Catherine is french.

Yes I read them, did you? Did you see how Quebec gets as much money from Ottawa as every other province combined?

Did you see how we receive per capita about half of what other provinces with the same GDP receive?

Experiment 626 wrote:

Let's face it, Harper already signed into law a few years ago that Quebec is a 'distinctly unique society within Canadian culture'. He pretty much gave Quebec the unique idenity it's wanted, while keeping all the many perks the province already recieves.
If people actually think Quebec will be better off as it's own distinct country, then fine. Enjoy being the 'new Greece' and don't come crying expecting a now foriegn government to bail you out!

Um, I might point out that both the Charlottetown and Meech Lake accords (which is what I think you're talking about) both failed, actually. Harper signed off an a non-binding recognition by the House of Commons.

"Que cette Chambre reconnaisse que les Québécoises et les Québécois forment une nation au sein d'un Canada uni."

It has no legally binding power.

 Manchu wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Political pandering to Quebec is a serious problem. Quebec benefits more from being part of Canada than any other province.

That pretty much ignores the fact that more or less 30% of the population remains sovereignist. It's not a political strategy to suck more cash out of Ottawa.

Kovnik, your point about the percentage of separatists doesn't counter KC's position at all. I'd say 30% is a great sweet spot to put pressure on without being so OTT that they throw their hands up in Ottawa. It's a "non-serious serious problem" if you see what I mean.

Okay, I used to respect your point, but now your just talking out of ignorance. If you truly beleives that people like Lévesque, Parizeau, Bouchard and even Marois are only using the sovereignty mouvement to milk the federal cow (I might give you Landry, because that guy was the most machiavellian fiscalist to ever walk the earth), then I suggest you educate yourself before drawing intent for the leadership of an entire social mouvement.

Bouchard when he founded the BQ more or less said that they were trying to get a better deal for Quebec, but if no such deal came they would help take Quebec out of Canada.

Those comments have framed the separatist movement for the rest of Canada for the last 20 years.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

I can't deny I don't like separatists because, as I see it, they seek the death of country.

It's a sovereignty-association. You retain the rights of passage over the St-Laurent without any taxes or anything. We gain back all the federal competencies.

Pages ago you cited some reasons for separation that honestly, were ludacris. You had to dig deep for those and mainly I'm sad you felt you needed to do that.

Again, such as Law, History, political position? If you think our love for hockey outshines all these, then you have a ridiculous conception of what a distinct culture is. After all, both Brazil and Germany go nuts over soccer, are you going to maintain they should not be separate from another?

How about the fact that in the event of a new international conflict, over 65% of english canadian are for forced conscription, while in Quebec it's a little bit under 25% ? Not being forced to go kill and get killed is a pretty important issue, even tho it might never come up.

French is supposed to be this great language and of course it is. It's one of the world's great languages but if it's only used as a divider is it? Is anything? There is more to French than this, there has to be. French should be part of the rich tapstry that makes up Quebec and Canada's culture. A important way in which individual Quebecois indentify themselves. I hope it means a lot more to you than just some wall to throw up between you and me and Francophones and Anglos. That's what it should never be.

Than let's all learn Esperanto!! Let's all reny our traditions and values and conform ourselves to the pseudo-british culture, simply because we might 'create walls', and 'divide ourselves'. What don't you understand about the fact that our right to govern ourselves was stolen from us, and that we don't appreciate it?

Frontiers are other dividers, we should get rid of those too.

Jefffar wrote:
Bouchard when he founded the BQ more or less said that they were trying to get a better deal for Quebec, but if no such deal came they would help take Quebec out of Canada.

Those comments have framed the separatist movement for the rest of Canada for the last 20 years.

The Bloc existed to defend the rights and interest of quebecers at the federal level (if they had been bright they would've also included all french speaking communities in Canada, not just quebecers). And since ihas always been clear that Independance would come from the provincial level, the actions of the Bloc have never been 'a frame' for the separatist mouvement.

Half of the separatists I know questionned the use of them existing.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

@dogma: And, that makes it OK somehow?

It isn't a matter of whether or not its acceptable, its a matter of whether or not its inevitable. Cultures interact with one another, its what they do. There are very few examples in history of cultural groups, of any size, living in true isolation; and most of those came about on remote islands (and even they weren't stagnant). Cultures evolve, its what they do, whether they do so as a result of internal or external influence only matters if in attempting to fruitlessly cling to what you believe is yours you deny that simple truth.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

As far as Europe goes, have you been paying attention to what it has been causing, right? The steady rise of something called National Socialism? Remember them? They're back because of the stresses this has caused.

Steady rise? What? National socialism never went away, it just lost its footing in the press because it ceased to be mainstream. Now that the press no longer has to limit itself to mainstream issues due to the exponential growth of mass media they get their share of time in The Sun.

The shift in perception of the role of war in Europe effectively began just before WWI, and crystallized after people saw the devastation that conflict caused. This is why you saw so much popular resistance to war despite German aggression during the interbellum period. Prior to WWI war would have been extremely popular, because it was as a way of "refreshing" a nation. National socialism rose to prominence in concert with this movement, not necessarily advocating war, but certainly extolling the virtues of national purity. Of course, the more cosmopolitan pacifist movement eventually won out.

In essence, WWI marked the beginning of European integration, and the associated social movements its fallout spawned. What we're seeing now isn't a return to open war in Europe, genocide, or anything remotely similar. What we're seeing is mild social backlash as a result of cultural interaction.

As ever your tendency is to immediately retreat to hyperbolic comparisons. I'm mean, you don't get much more hyperbolic than "Look, there's some Nazis!" Its really rather tiresome.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Stopping homogenization without division is like trying to stop gravity while standing on the surface of a black hole. It's going to win in the end, eventually.

See, this is part of the problem. Homogenization isn't the end result of any cultural interaction. It simply doesn't happen. Claiming that it does is to ape Marcuse's terrible argument regarding one-dimensional man, and the way mass media makes us all somehow the same. Its an overly romantic take on a sort of pseudo-primitivism that fails to appreciate the complexity of modern society, and the diversity of individual experience.

To use this post as an example, I'll bet that most people here who grew up in the US can't tell me who Herbert Marcuse was without using Wikipedia. This in itself points to an piece of knowledge that marks my experience as fundamentally distinct from that of many others.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
I suggest you educate yourself before drawing intent for the leadership of an entire social mouvement.

Hmm, I don't think my comment attributed any motive to the PQ. But now that I think about it, it makes sense. After all, the PQ has backed off of pushing for a referendum, which means they are not spending their resources trying to convince Québécois to vote for secession. It's a reasonable inference to make that the PQ sees the status quo in terms of desire for sovereignty (the 30%) as adequate to back up their less dramatic programs -- like netting more federal money to support French language initiatives.

 dogma wrote:

Steady rise? What? National socialism never went away, it just lost its footing in the press because it ceased to be mainstream. Now that the press no longer has to limit itself to mainstream issues due to the exponential growth of mass media they get their share of time in The Sun.

I never said it went away. It declined (please pay attention to the difference). Now it's rising again due to social and economic pressures.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/07/neo-nazi-party-has-election-breakthrough-in-greece-leader-warns-time-for-fear-has-come/

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/08/hungarian-anti-roma-marches

etc...etc...etc...

 dogma wrote:

In essence, WWI marked the beginning of European integration, and the associated social movements its fallout spawned. What we're seeing now isn't a return to open war in Europe, genocide, or anything remotely similar. What we're seeing is mild social backlash as a result of cultural interaction.

'Mild'? Never mind that technically what you just said includes such 'mild' events as the wars in the former Yugoslavia, ten THOUSAND neo nazis took to the streets of Budapest in the largest single gathering since the second world war and won 21% of the Hungarian Parliament. What sounds 'mild' about that?

 dogma wrote:

As ever your tendency is to immediately retreat to hyperbolic comparisons. I'm mean, you don't get much more hyperbolic than "Look, there's some Nazis!" Its really rather tiresome.

Dogma, at what point did I compare anything specifically to Nazism? I simply pointed out that your argument was flawed in that it stressed societies who responded in unpredictable and dangerous ways, including a rise in radical hate based nationalist groups.

 dogma wrote:

To use this post as an example, I'll bet that most people here who grew up in the US can't tell me who Herbert Marcuse was without using Wikipedia. This in itself points to an piece of knowledge that marks my experience as fundamentally distinct from that of many others.

And yet, if that statement is true, you outline he was essentially right in the majority of cases, in that mass media pacifies the masses, using, in this case, ignorance, to silence dissension.

IN other news on topic...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119491-Eidos-Employee-Fired-Over-Hate-Speech-on-Facebook

"Unfortunately, the ugliness didn't stop with the shooting. "You just can't find good assassins these days!" Blake Marsh, a now-former tester at Eidos Montreal, wrote on his Facebook page. In a follow-up comment, he added, "I give this bitch a month before someone with better aim comes forth and does what must be done.""

So what is it about this subject that just seems to bring donkey-caves out of the woodwork in Canada? I've been there in the past, it seemed like such a nice, polite place, I half expected to find they had some sort of brainwashing program set up to cure jerks.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

So what is it about this subject that just seems to bring donkey-caves out of the woodwork in Canada? I've been there in the past, it seemed like such a nice, polite place, I half expected to find they had some sort of brainwashing program set up to cure jerks.

Well, honestly, game testers makes mini wargamers cons seems like a posh gentleman club gatherings.
But that is very crass, indeed.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

Well, honestly, game testers makes mini wargamers cons seems like a posh gentleman club gatherings.
But that is very crass, indeed.

Well, I agree about it being crass, but having been to gatherings of posh gentlemen, this place is spotlessly sans the butler with a plate full of pure Colombian snow with sterling silver coke staws. Bankers and politicians throw great parties.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

I never said it went away. It declined (please pay attention to the difference). Now it's rising again due to social and economic pressures.

Except it isn't, which is why I assumed you were implying that Nazism somehow went away. I mean, of the two examples you listed one is about the Golden Dawn, and the other is Hungarian. Further, we're not talking about economic pressure, we're talking about the effects of cultural interaction. There are distinct things.

First, the Golden Dawn is a Greek organization. Greece has only ever been a "stable" country, and even that only for about 30 years. The group itself traces its roots back to the 80's and the larger right-wing movement that came about following the fall of the military junta. It hasn't gained power specifically, so much as Michaloliakos has remained a major figure in the Greek far right, which has always been politically significant.

Second, Hungary has always had a checkered history with the Roma (like pretty much every Eastern European country). Any increase in violence against them has nothing to do with European cultural integration, and everything to do with the Eastern Europe's history of increasing discrimination against that extant population during times of hardship.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

'Mild'? Never mind that technically what you just said includes such 'mild' events as the wars in the former Yugoslavia, ten THOUSAND neo nazis took to the streets of Budapest in the largest single gathering since the second world war and won 21% of the Hungarian Parliament. What sounds 'mild' about that?

No, it doesn't. What I just said includes current events relating to European integration. Not past events related to the fall of the Soviet Union and post-Communism. Again, you're using a ridiculously broad brush in an attempt to make a point that is grounded in paranoia.

Post-communism is still a factor Eastern Europe, but its not at all relevant to the point I was making about cultural interaction.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Dogma, at what point did I compare anything specifically to Nazism?

I didn't say that you drew a comparison, I said you pointed at the existence of Nazis in places as evidence of increasing social unrest. This is a hyperbolic claim as Nazis exist in places even when there is virtually no social unrest. And, as I noted above, the places in which far right groups do have sway have had significant far right movements for all of contemporary history.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

I simply pointed out that your argument was flawed in that it stressed societies who responded in unpredictable and dangerous ways, including a rise in radical hate based nationalist groups.

You didn't actually deal with my argument at all. You said that cultural interaction stresses societies, which isn't something I even dealt with, and is self-evident to anyone who has studied the topic in even the briefest sense. You then pointed abstractly at Europe (and later elaborated with a rather poor set of examples that weren't relevant to the initial topic), and tried to hearken back to the qualitative type of judgment which I explicitly rejected as being irrelevant.

Again, whether or not cultural interaction is "OK" is irrelevant (And, honestly, the way you phrased your initial response was extremely xenophobic.). What matters is that it is inevitable. The type of social controls that can actually impede it serve only to cause additional stress and violence.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

And yet, if that statement is true, you outline he was essentially right in the majority of cases, in that mass media pacifies the masses, using, in this case, ignorance, to silence dissension.

No, not at all. It means that the whole of "media" is a vast thing, and while I'm more well read than most, even I'm not aware of everything. I couldn't, for example, give you the name of single literary critic, or tell you the name of a prominent contributor to Rolling Stone, or even more than 3 characters from Lost. The truth is that all people are ignorant of most things. The existence of mass media doesn't make people more homogeneous, it just makes more information available to more people because, at the end of the day, none of us can know or experience everything.

Well Kovnik, when all is said and done let's not argue because if in your own heart you do not feel Canadian nothing anyone says will change that. Only you know how you feel. For me personally I can only say I'm sorry you do not feel included in Canada. All I would ask is that you always represent that alienated feeling as honestly as possible and not as some sort of debate excercise.

-KC

 dogma wrote:
Further, we're not talking about economic pressure, we're talking about the effects of cultural interaction. There are distinct things.

Yes and No.

Cultures under increasing stress (of any type) behave differently based on a few factors. The nature of the stress, the historical relationship with other cultures in proximity, and the ideology of the culture are big ones.

Put pressure on a culture, be it crop failure, political unrest, plague and economic collapse and you see this: 'someone must be to blame'. It does not take long for the scapegoating to start from there. Cram two cultures together, tell them that have one vote as a group in a larger body, predominantly one of the two cultures, and watch the fur fly. One party will always feel disenfranchised and attempt to lash out in some manner. The pressure could be either cultural or economic, historically the end result is if not the same, very similar.

 dogma wrote:

What I just said includes current events relating to European integration. Not past events related to the fall of the Soviet Union and post-Communism. Again, you're using a ridiculously broad brush in an attempt to make a point that is grounded in paranoia.

You ever been hunted by people who wanted to kill you due to not being a white Anglo-Saxon protestant? It's somewhat paranoia inducing.
And, again, that broad stroke was yours, not mine, when you started defining it in terms of events since WW1.

 dogma wrote:

Post-communism is still a factor Eastern Europe, but its not at all relevant to the point I was making about cultural interaction.

You think that what had happened and is happening in eastern Europe has nothing to do with the fact that Russia shoved a large number of smaller cultures who actively detested one another into the same nations together? The fact that as soon as the big threat keeping them all together was gone, the situation came to a boil very, very rapidly?

 dogma wrote:

I didn't say that you drew a comparison,

 dogma wrote:

As ever your tendency is to immediately retreat to hyperbolic comparisons.

 dogma wrote:

I said you pointed at the existence of Nazis in places as evidence of increasing social unrest. This is a hyperbolic claim as Nazis exist in places even when there is virtually no social unrest. And, as I noted above, the places in which far right groups do have sway have had significant far right movements for all of contemporary history.

No, I said that neo-nazis increasing in power was evidence of social unrest. I never said they did not exist in other locations. There will always be random fascist donkey-caves. They don't, under normal circumstances, gain large followings and take up political power at the national level, however.

 dogma wrote:
And, honestly, the way you phrased your initial response was extremely xenophobic.

I'm not a big fan of Americans (and by extension anglo Canadians), for obvious reasons. I find the most disgusting thing is that most of them seem to think that their genocide and discrimination against natives is a thing 'in the past' rather than an ongoing situation.

 dogma wrote:

No, not at all. It means that the whole of "media" is a vast thing, and while I'm more well read than most, even I'm not aware of everything. I couldn't, for example, give you the name of single literary critic, or tell you the name of a prominent contributor to Rolling Stone, or even more than 3 characters from Lost. The truth is that all people are ignorant of most things. The existence of mass media doesn't make people more homogeneous, it just makes more information available to more people because, at the end of the day, none of us can know or experience everything.

I think maybe I didn't make my point clear. A better word than ignorance might have been 'omission'. People don't get upset about things the media does not cover. You'll find there are a surprising number of things that fall under this code of silence. If police beat a black man to death in Compton, the media is on it like white on rice. If Police beat an Indian to death on a reservation, no one hears about it. This can have occasionally hilarious dissonance. ABC Nightly News, for example, was at a loss to explain why locals were cheering on escaped cop killer Bucky Phillips (to this day I have a 'got bucky?' t-shirt.) and actively hindering police efforts to catch (murder) him. The reason was that not that long before, 30 state troopers had broken up a native ceremony that was 'too close to the road' with batons and tear gas. That part didn't make the news. The man they shot six times in the back and killed while looking for Bucky also didn't make the news.

Why?

Because people would get pissed off about it. People who matter would have to get out of bed and address angry citizens over a bunch of dirty indians. And if local news doesn't cover it, the national news or foreign media most likely will never hear about it. So it never happened. John Q Public goes home to his 2.5 children and his white picket fence and isn't disturbed by the sight of his country's police clubbing little children with batons. He's also not disturbed by any number of wars his country illegally runs on the side, secret prisons, and the deliberate destabilization of democracies not friendly to US interests.

BaronIveagh wrote:@Azreal: 1: patriotism does not require an existing recognized state. However, according to a non-binding statement from the Canadian government, yes, it is.
2: Official policy and practical outcome are two different things. Stopping homogenization without division is like trying to stop gravity while standing on the surface of a black hole. It's going to win in the end, eventually.
3: As a survivor and decedent of survivors of state sponsored genocide, the ultimate outcome is the same, it just lacks the immediacy of killing them all outright. It's the same sort of philosophy that ran the Carlisle Schools. Rather than engaging in horrific slaughter, slowly grind the culture away until there's nothing left.

1: No, patriotism does not require an existing recognized state. But having a country does. Quebec is not a country. They are considered a nation, which is entirely different.

2: You're right, it will win in the end. And the end result will include some of what was put into it. The Quebecois are crying because they think their culture will disappear, whereas it will really just evolve and meld together. Kinda like how eventually there will only be one race of people, and they'll all be a tanned beige colour. But that uni-race will still have the genetic material of all the races that contributed in the past. That's technically homogenization, but it's the kind that is only feared by bigots.

3: No. My example in #2 has a group being included into a melting pot. There is still copper inside bronze; the copper doesn't go away. The residential school cultural genocide sought to remove the culture entirely; not to incorporate it. That is, that atrocity tried to destroy all copper, and leave only tin.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Yes and No.

Cultures under increasing stress (of any type) behave differently based on a few factors. The nature of the stress, the historical relationship with other cultures in proximity, and the ideology of the culture are big ones.

Its mostly the nature of the stress. "ZOMG, my kid speaks English better than French!" is not as strong a motivation as "I'm poor, and that immigrant is rich!"

 BaronIveagh wrote:

And, again, that broad stroke was yours, not mine, when you started defining it in terms of events since WW1.

What? Read my post again. I said that WWI marked the beginning of European integration*. And that what we're seeing now, as opposed to then (when Nazism was a big deal), is mild social backlash. Now does not mean 20 years ago when post-Communism became a huge issue, now means now. At most the last decade when post-Communism was still a big issue, but less of one than the formation of the EU.

*Note also that the phrase "European integration" is not conventionally applied to the entire continent of Europe, in large part due to that whole "Eastern Bloc" thing.

 dogma wrote:

You think that what had happened and is happening in eastern Europe has nothing to do with the fact that Russia shoved a large number of smaller cultures who actively detested one another into the same nations together? The fact that as soon as the big threat keeping them all together was gone, the situation came to a boil very, very rapidly?

You mean Yugoslavia? That wasn't the Russians, that was the result of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Putting aside that Yugoslavia was only initially part of the Eastern Bloc, look at a map of the administrative units of SFRY, and look at a map of the countries that resulted from the dissolution of Yugoslavia; they're essentially the same.

Aside from that, there's really no difference from the map of the Eastern Bloc, and the map of Eastern Europe before it became the Eastern Bloc; aside from the Czech/Slovak split (Which was very much an "Eh, alright." sort of thing.). The Russians didn't do a lot of lumping cultures together. The ones that they did (the ones they absorbed into the Soviet Union), are remarkably stable countries and really only fought Moscow in their rebellions, where they occurred.

As far as "is happening": again, the Roma have always been victims in Eastern Europe, and Greece has never really been stable.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

As ever your tendency is to immediately retreat to hyperbolic comparisons.

Ah, I misunderstood your reply, allow me to reiterate.

You didn't compare anything to Nazism. You explicitly stated that there are Nazis today, and that their present existence should worry us because there were Nazis in the past. This is an obvious comparison of Nazism now, to Nazism then (when it was all the rage).

I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
John Q Public goes home to his 2.5 children and his white picket fence and isn't disturbed by the sight of his country's police clubbing little children with batons. He's also not disturbed by any number of wars his country illegally runs on the side, secret prisons, and the deliberate destabilization of democracies not friendly to US interests.

Why should he be disturbed by any of those things? I'm not, and I'm aware of them all. Hell, its part of my job to be, and I don't even work directly for the government.

I will say this though, reservations are issues areas for a number of reasons (not all sympathetic). If something gakky happens get it on video, get it to a news organization, and see what happens. That's pretty much all you have.

 dogma wrote:

Its mostly the nature of the stress. "ZOMG, my kid speaks English better than French!" is not as strong a motivation as "I'm poor, and that immigrant is rich!"

Both are actually powerful motivators. Your language example above was actually what motivated a lot of English expats in Holland to leave there and go to the New World, at the time effectively taking their lives in their hands.

 dogma wrote:

*Note also that the phrase "European integration" is not conventionally applied to the entire continent of Europe, in large part due to that whole "Eastern Bloc" thing.

Then I suggest 'Western European Integration' might be a better phrase for that.

 dogma wrote:

You mean Yugoslavia? That wasn't the Russians, that was the result of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Putting aside that Yugoslavia was only initially part of the Eastern Bloc, look at a map of the administrative units of SFRY, and look at a map of the countries that resulted from the dissolution of Yugoslavia; they're essentially the same.

Actually I was not 'just' talking about Yugoslavia, though that one was the headline grabber. You might recall that several other breakups occurred with some violence, most though it didn't get beyond the 'riots and snipers' phase.

 dogma wrote:

The ones that they did (the ones they absorbed into the Soviet Union), are remarkably stable countries and really only fought Moscow in their rebellions, where they occurred.

And Georgia and Estonia. And, secondly, many of them had been 'absorbed' since the time of Peter the Great or earlier, so claiming that it's a 'communist' thing is a bit misleading.

 dogma wrote:

You didn't compare anything to Nazism. You explicitly stated that there are Nazis today, and that their present existence should worry us because there were Nazis in the past. This is an obvious comparison of Nazism now, to Nazism then (when it was all the rage).

I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

So, in a nutshell, you're claiming that we shouldn't worry about them taking power because they're not the exact same nazis that lead to the destruction of most of Europe years ago? While I grant, yes, most of those guys are dead, many of the new guys are every bit as rabid about exactly the same things. Dogma, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana, Reason and Common Sense. It's like saying that, upon being zapped by electrified concertina, that it won't possibly happen again.

 dogma wrote:

Why should he be disturbed by any of those things?

You're that divorced from morality and ethics that you actually ask that question?

 dogma wrote:

I'm not, and I'm aware of them all. Hell, its part of my job to be, and I don't even work directly for the government.

Dogma, knowing about it intellectually and seeing it are two different things. I've seen it. He should be deeply disturbed, because the same men running his country are also the men who tell CIA operatives to pay mercs to slaughter villages as part of false flag operations. Who order the covert deaths of their own citizens, guys like said John Q Public, just because they don't happen to agree with the government (and, no, I'm not talking about al-Awlaki).

He should be damn disturbed when the people he elects based on their 'christian moral values' are quite happy to order the deaths of thousands over breakfast as a favor to the men who bribe him during his election campaign.

Dogma, I have to say, the fact that you are not disturbed in the least by this and think that others should not be either makes me question your sanity. I'm not disturbed by them at this point, but still have the lingering decency to realize I should be.

You know Baron when the "No" side win the referendum some politicians blamed the "ethnic" vote which meant immigrants and first nations. The vast majority of first nations in Quebec would prefer to remain in Canada in the event of some succession. The separatist movement, which is prone to racial rabble rousing isn't as friendly to Natives as you seem to think. Do you support the First Nations in that decision?

Using "anglo" as an insult annoys me. It's like when South Koreans call Europeans "Yankee" (which they do; the term is used for anyone who is caucasian).

 Melissia wrote:
Using "anglo" as an insult annoys me. It's like when South Koreans call Europeans "Yankee" (which they do; the term is used for anyone who is caucasian).

It also seems to further reinforce the sentiment that there aren't really any good racial insults for white people. They exist, of course, but they don't draw the same ire and instant reaction as the other more incendiary terms for other ethnic groups.