It's when reading things like this that I miss the Cold War ..... :)

CFS Alert, on the northern tip if Ellesmere Island is an intelligence station (COMINT & SIGINT). I had two tours there, 6 months each, during the lat '70s.

During my 2nd tour, we had a base defense exercise. The scenario (such as it was), was that for some strange reason, the Soviets decided to drop a regiment of paratroopers to attack the base while the Bears flew overhead to rain nuclear destruction on North America. Our mission was to defend the base - specifically, the operations building - long enough to destroy all the classified material contained therein.

We were freaking squints, not frikking pongos ....... even so, they figured we should be able to hold out for 4-6 hours before being overrun. Personally, I think they were being optimistic.

Too bad they also discovered that it would take us 3-4 weeks to destory all the classified material .......

Except the Rangers *are* military. Their officers are Army, they are trained by the Army, supplied by the Army, and paid by the Army.

Full disclosure: I'm 56 years old, and still own a Lee-Enfield that was given to me by my father when I was 13, which originally belonged to HIS father. It still works as well as it did the day I got it.

I grew up in Labrador, hunting fishing and camping. I had two tours of CFS Alert, at 82 deg 30 min North. I've been to Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Churchill, Tuktoyuktuk, Iqualiuit, and very many places in between. Believe me, I've seen cold - but cold isn't even the biggest problem.

The Rangers are generally either Innu or Amerind. Technically, they are on duty or on call 24/7. Most of those involved in the Rangers still follow their traditional lifestyles - they hunt, fish, and trap for a living, and spend their time outdoors.

They don''t carry multiple weapons - they don't have the space or weight to spare, given the rest of their kit. That's why the Lee-Enfield has lasted as long as it has - it can be used to hunt for seal, moose or caribou, or defence against moose (ugly, nasty brutes - very evil tempered), wolves, or polar bears. You can hit a target out to about 350 yards or so - more than sufficient for any practical use, and long enough that you don't have to do extra laundry because a polar bear decided that you looked like a snack.

In the meantime - the rifle is carried around on your back while you're going through thick brush, getting banged and nicked as you go. It's sitting in the bottom of a canoe, or a kayak. it's getting banged around while sitting on the running boards of the snowmobile. It's in the bottom of a 12 foot motor boat while you go from island to island in the Arctic Ocean, getting banged around and covered with salt spray. It's stuffed where ever it can fit on the dogsled (yes, they are still used in some places). And after all that crap and abuse, you just have to pick the thing up, and it will hit what you aim at. No fuss, no muss.

Bottom line: Stand me in the world's best gun shop, give me unlimited credit, and tell me I can take one - and ONLY one weapon. I'll take the Lee-Enfield, every time. And I'll still be using it when every other weapon there has died of old age or just disintegrated because of the environment.

I pity the poor bastard that has to make the decision on the replacement. I'm just glad it's not me.

Except that you're not going to catch HIV from somebody standing next to you at the bus stop, just because they said hello to you and breathed in your general direction

Except, nothing according to ANY wiki can be considered to be anything but suspect. Personal (and professional) opinion is that they did exist. -- signed, somebody who has an honours degree in Soviet & East European Studies, and has used the name Gorshkov (yes, from the self-same Admiral) on the internet since the early '80s.

model villages to model aircraft - an (obvious, I think) reference to Potemkin Villages. And a damned good comparison, at that.

The "rule of thumb" breakdown was like this: Anything that required physical equipment (powerful computers, test rigs, etc) they sucked at, because they didn't have it. Anything that did NOT require physical equipment (mathematics, optics, theoretical physics, etc), they excelled at.

I remember when I was doing my linguist course while in the Navy, back in '82. One of my instructor's husband had PhD in physics - they were Jewish, and had only been able to leave the Soviet Union the year before. He saw the chess programme I had on my Radio Shack Model I (yes, I'm that old), and nearly freaked - not because of the chess programme, but because he'd never seen a computer that powerful - and he couldn't believe he could just go to the store and actually *buy* one.

Same for Newfoundlanders, if you want to be accurate.

Am I the only one here who understood my comment to be a joke?

Calling what is spoken in Quebec "French" is just as silly as saying what is spoken in Newfoundland is "English"

You answered your question in your question. To wit:

.... and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question.

In other words, he's not managing.

The whole idea that China should be 'held responsible' for the hacking is just plain silly on it's face. Governments and private corporations have been spying on each other ever since the first cave man tried to keep a secret.

Can you imagine during the cold war of the US President went to Stalin and said "please stop spying on us"? Because that's exactly what's been suggested here.

Well, I grew up in a small town myself - only 3,500 - in the interior of Labrador. It don't get no smaller than that :)

Also, the riding of Ottawa-Vanier wasn't exactly what you would call The Big CIty ....... Vanier was (still is?) a small French slum surrounded by Ottawa. We had grade 8 kids come to the campaign office asking questions for their social studies classes who literally couldn't speak a word of English. It honestly reminded me of being on the North Shore up past Quebec City, it was so provincial.

There is a big difference between thinking that Climate Change is a myth, and being against Kyoto. I am a (Canadian) conservative.

Do I think that climate change is real? Yes.
Do I think it's mostly man-made? Yes.
Do I think Kyoto is a GOOD THING(tm)? No freaking way.

Kyoto exempted two of the biggest carbon producers in the world - India & China - from having to reduce their emissions, while expecting the developed world to not only reduce theirs, but to PAY EVERYBODY ELSE TO DO NOTHING.

Kyoto, in practice, was more about wealth redistribution to the developing world than climate change.

And in the specific Canadian case ..... the Jean Cretien government, which actually signed the treaty, did absolutely nothing to implement it - to the point where not only did we NOT reduce our emissions, but they had actually increased by a rather large percent - to the point where we would have had to shut down every gasoline & diesel engine in the country for a year to even begin to meet it's objectives. All the Tories did was call a spade a spade, and face reality.