Your blowing smoke Snert.

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And...Irregardless isn`t a word, the word is regardless. Irregardless it`s a double negative [...AND HERE. PERSONAL ATTACKS, SNIDE OR OTHERWISE, ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THIS FORUM SO THAT EVERYONE FEELS COMFORTABLE COMMENTING. -MODERATOR.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless

Simple Math

Thanks for the correction.

Let's be clear

I don't expect business to have morals. Although one could make a lot of fun with business and "orals".

Certainty all around...

"The one thing that is certain is that China is changing in the direction of personal freedoms."

Really? Would that be the reason why ecveryone and his dog in China, who has enough pennies to rub together are fleeing in the form of buying up property here on a scale that are blowing a lot of Canadians out of any hope of ever owning a piece of their own country? Ooops, I forget. I only see things that way, because I'm a racist. Since that pretty moniker was delivered in a column now closed down, I will take the liberty of taking exception to it here. Zalm, it should be beneath you to try to settle an argument by plastering ugly labels on other people! Where the Hel are you coming from doing that? Besides, your argument was out in left field, for I was never drawing comparisons between American and Chinese culture, only between Chinese culture and my own standards. Don't get me started on our brothers south of the border! I just found it a bit craven that you dredge up a list of grievances against Chinese culture - only to turn it against something else! Could you not find a description of 'the Ugly American' so you wouldn't have to do that strange maneuvering? It did kind of make me wonder if you were into 'China-boosting' as you put it. All other things equal, however, The US is closer to home, and that's not racism, only geography. If, however, you will endeavour to take a hacksaw across he land at the 49th and float us up close to Taiwan, I may think differently, who knows..

As for Harper, I think it may have dawned on him, that the conomy isn't going so good, and that if it keeps not doing that, he will actually see that laid at his doorstep, since he now has a majority. This may explain why he suddenly became less upstanding. At the risk of sounding like the proverbial broken record I will end this piece with : It's really very simple: Don't buy their stuff.

[EDITED.]

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I fully expect that the Province will intervene against UBC and force the relocation of the proposed hospice..

BC wouldn`t want to offend millions of Chinese Nationalists planning on buying BC Prime real estate.

Calling a spade a spade isn`t racism.

[COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]

Simple Math

Thank you for your support. You cannot know this, but moderators in the Tyee do not moderate name-calling in my case, because I have asked them not to. I have never believed that silencing voices of disagreement, however rude, is a good idea. I would rather know what people say, and then debate it out with them. Funny enough, I value the adversity, for that forces us to grow, and I am in the business of trying to grow wiser. But I agree with you on the political correctness, which I think is a dangerous choice. Issues and problems do not go away, because we browbeat people into not mentioning them. The problems we have with sexual exploitation of children in our society should have taught us that much.

Moderators

Dis Snert complain for the English lesson?

I thought so!

I rest my case, you see what I mean Dorothy.

It`s okay for Snert to insult, or Zalm, or Luke.

Get stuffed, no wonder the Tyee is headed downhill fast!

Typo...Did Snert complain?

Yea I thought not!

Dorothy

Remember this?

"I expect people will plaster all kinds of ugly names on me for saying that, but so be it."

I called you on it when you conflated Canadian residents of Chinese origin protesting at UBC, with the motivations of the Chinese people under its government itself, as you and Oilcovered Fowl saw them. Those were Canadians you slagged - ones with ignorant points of view, perhaps, but Canadians. You made them Chinese, and ones equally as nefarious and evil as the senior leadership in Beijing. That was wrong and so were you. Go back to that thread and read it again, because I'm clear you're very mixed up about that argument. The only argument I made there was that Chinese and American governments have behaved remarkably similarly in the aims of securing for the benefit only of their own population the resources, the finances and the rules to enrich themselves at the cost of others, to whom a just share naturally belongs.

Like I said, I don't support craven pandering to China, as I think its leadership is equally craven in hanging onto power, its wealthy 'connected' populace (numbering about half a million) is ripping the world blind for every ounce of profit they can to the detriment of the rest of the people, and the two of them are turning a blind eye to each other while more than a billion live in poverty, want, impossible conditions, and in broken families. This is not desirable from anyone's point of view.

I said Harper was right to look at that and refuse to support it. Tieleman said he caved. I can tacitly agree. Where's the argument?

You don't need to engage in ridiculous hyperbole and castigate ordinary Chinese peasants as evil simply because they happen to reside in the same land as their leadership. Don't you know that the 140 national groups in China each have mostly different aims for themselves, their communities, their provinces and their nation? Like Tito in Yugoslavia, the only way the Chinese Politburo can ride this tiger is by suppressing massively the aims of its people, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones. And yes, some of the worst racism occurs within China among its own peoples.

But don't use that as an excuse to engage in your own version of hyperbole. When you say things like this:
"Please don't tell me you don't think this fits with the Chinese? One thing is the paranoid superior Daleks they are governed (as in 'controlled') by, but it is certainly easy enough to draw the red line from them to the impressive theatrics we have seen lately in the attempt at dominating the little real estate 'world' at UBC, where a group of people are worried about their property values."

- ordinary people look away - in embarrassment.

Simple Math

Don't worry - you'll know when I turn truly racist. You'll have no defense. Meanwhile - stick to facts. You presented none, and your flight of fancy that the "province will intervene" is just as ridiculous as dorothy's.

The last time the province intervened that heavily they shipped Japanese-Canadian citizens to prison camps and seized their assets. We've learned a thing or two about ourselves since then and passed a couple of laws to prevent that kind of thing from happening to others. I understand new immigrants have trouble learning the same lessons so we have to make allowances, but there can be no talk of discriminating against terminally ill people simply because they're terminally ill.

And I'm sure, given time, you will learn that too.

Unfortunately, one of the other lessons nobody likes learning in this country, or in any other around the world, is that "money talks". And UBC has billions. The NIMBY residents of Promontory are getting a free education at UBC's expense. I hope they enjoy it. I've certainly had the same education administered to me often enough.

Typo

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Some very fine work here

Thanks zalm.

Zalm

"Those were Canadians you slagged - ones with ignorant points of view, perhaps, but Canadians. You made them Chinese..."

You really need to clear that red haze from your field of view! No, I did not 'make' these people anything. They did that themselves, when they expounded their culture and heritage as basis for promoting better property value prospects for their condos. I could have credited either reason, but both together makes it fishy to me! Chalk that up to my Scandinavian pragmatism, as well as many years of living and working next to those Canadians whereof you speak. Many of my best friends are of Chinese descent, but I refuse to grant them the high ground where they cannot rightfully lay claim to it. And, their culture is not now, nor has it even been, egalitarian. That is what I said, and I have that on the best authority - those Canadians of Chinese descent, whom I have asked.

Meanwhile, I'd certainly be interested in you elaborating on this:

"you'll know when I turn truly racist. You'll have no defense."

What is that supposed to mean?

Zalm is Full of it!

[COMMENT REMOVED. FOCUS ON ARGUMENTS NOT PERSONAL ATTACKS OR YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. -MODERATOR.]

If you Zalm are incapable of understanding that the hospece debate is not a localized issue, it`s an issue of flexing ethnic muscle.

I suggest you mute your comments until the UBC decision makers announce this Friday, if the hospice gets scrubbed both you and your girlfriend need to apologize.

I always appreciate Dorothy`s comments and insight [AND HERE.]

An almost brand new highrise condo in UBC 100% Chinese occupied. Not Canadian born Chinese but recent Chinese immigrants.

Immigrants of the handful of connected wealthy Chinese.

Racism, that isn`t racism, that`s fact, as for Zalm THREATENING racism.

[...AND HERE. -MODERATOR.]

Bwaaahahahahahaaaaa!!!!

Mebbe you'd better go back and read what was written. "Flexing ethinic muscle"? Who said Canadian-born Chinese? Not me. If you're a landed immigrant, you're Canadian regardless of the colour of your skin or your connections back in the mother contry.

Regardless of whether the hospice is scrubbed, immigrants and Canadian citizens both need to learn that Canadian principles are founded on sharing and looking out for one another, even at the cost to one's own traditions. That's what multiculturalism is about. Maybe we don't get it right all the time, but we get it a damn sight closer than in some countries of the world that I've been in.

dorothy

The [OFFENSIVE CHARACTERIZATION REMOVED. -MODERATOR.] poster called me a racist without providing a drop of proof, and then tried to say that it was OK for Chinese residents to act the way he says they did because BC wants their business. He's wrong.

As for you, just go back and read it again. I can't make it any clearer. I don't like the attitude of the residents of Promontory, but I don't assign to them attributes of nationalism that they are obviously here to escape, and are merely having a hard time coming to grips with the way that things are done here. They're only ignorant, not traitors.

Breaking news..

UBC just approved the hospice, they Asians are freaking.

Good on UBC.

This is going to get very interesting.

Cheers

Zalm

"..I don't assign to them attributes of nationalism that they are obviously here to escape, and are merely having a hard time coming to grips with the way that things are done here. They're only ignorant, not traitors."

I never did call anyone a traitor. I said that, according to the people of Chinese descent that I know ell, they are bearers of a culture that is not egalitarian. What that means is that if there is a disagreement, we both throw around what weight we have to throw, and when one is lying flat on the battlefield and the other still standing, we have our settlement. This isn't how we traditionally do it in the West. We expect a modicum of mutual respect between the stronger and the weaker party. The other theory was tested and rejected in the Second World War, where the losers were those who believed might makes right.

ERGO, when one has trouble coming to grips with the way things are done, the rule is, as you put it, "Canadian principles are founded on sharing and looking out for one another, even at the cost to one's own traditions." Now, we get in trouble if this very principle is one of the traditions you think we must give up, for what is left then? we end up right back to might is right, don't we? So, if people actually living here do not see it that way, but will kick and scream till they get their way, well maybe that's just ignorance, but the effect if we give in is betrayal of what it means to follow 'Canadian principles'. n'est-ce pas? So, it looks to me there is a rock-bottom beyond which we cannot accept that one thing is as good as another.

You can call this 'attitude', but that is rather nondescript and gives few clues as to how it might be changed. I think it is in fact friendlier and more truthful to recognize that we are looking at a different culture, and then try to initiate dialogue on that basis. More egalitarian, perhaps?

fiat lux

Gotta call bullshit on you too. You're saying pretty much the same thing that Dorothy is - that these aren't real Canadians, nor are they deserving of the same opportunity to spend money on wasteful things and live their lives as they please, just as we do.

I'm sure some of them still have their Chinese passports and Hong Kong companies to fall back on. But they're here, not to create a new Hong Kong, but because the old one is changing on them. Nobody willingly goes to another country without good reason.

It's easy to believe that some living at the Promontory are immoral ones who've ripped off their people, their government, intellectual property laws, and been responsible for devastating waste and pollution in Asia - that matters how? Don't we do that too? Or encourage it elsewhere in the world, with our Canadian mining companies to foreign villages in the path of a mine landslide or polluted water supply? With every holiday flight we take around the world? With our demands for new Ipods to satisfy our demand for immediacy and entertainment?

The real barrier is one you brought before us yourself so long ago - nationalism. We think our way of doing things is pretty darn good and don't want it to change. Maybe the residents of Promontory do too. One of us has to change our way of doing things.

We should change based on logic, and not emotion; caring, and not nationalism. It's all we've got to separate ourselves from the animals.

dorothy

They kicked and screamed, but didn't get their way. How has this process harmed you? What is all this verbiage about? Sometimes the system works, sometimes it doesn't. I like to think here that it did.

But it doesn't invalidate the premise of the article, that Harper sold out the Chinese people probably at the behest of Canadian big business. Nor does it change the fact that the US does exactly the same thing in other countries including Canada, as China does.

All your ranting here about "the way things are done" is meaningless. We do things the best way we can, we try to learn from our own mistakes, as well as the mistakes of others; and one of our most consistent mistakes is ascribing nefarious motives to people who are simply trying to live their lives, make opportunity work for them where they can, and have a little fun on the side. They're not evil Fu Manchu, they're just people who don't know any better, that whatever they do has consequences.

Now, are you gonna teach them, or am I?