Happy Independence Day

For the fourth of July.

My love of this country. I’m one of those people, you know, I see a soldier walk through the airport and, you know, my heart does a little double-take. And I hear the Pledge of Allegiance or our National Anthem and I get a lump in my throat. And know that that’s the majority of Americans. Also, I am so proud, have been so proud of our country, every step of the way.

Because even a resigning governor -an accomplished one- is better than a lame-duck president with no love for the country he leads.

Canada: Tastes Great, Less Filling

Damn straight!

Things About Canada You Might Not Know

Canada comes from the Iroquois word, kanata, meaning "village".

Possible names for Canada included New Britain, Laurentia, Cabotia and Ursalia. Floyd never made the list.

"O Canada" was proclaimed the national anthem on July 1st, 1980, one hundred years after it was first sung. Here is a very stirring rendition.

The last spike on the Canadian Pacific Railroad was driven in by Lord Strathcona (Donald Smith) on November 7th, 1885 at Craigellachie, British Columbia.

Louis Riel was technically not a Canadian citizen when he was hanged for treason.

Canada has no true deserts, though it does have places with desert-like features. The sandy expanse south of Lake Athabasca is an example.

The license plate for the Northwest Territories is in the shape of a polar bear (as you can see).

Things you didn't know until now.....

(information obtained from The Great Canadian Trivia Book, by Mark Kearney and Randy Ray)

Canada. It's Spelled With a "C"

Canadians have shown a lack of pride in terms of civic and historical matters in the past and this year is no different.

Only forty-two percent of respondents in a recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey knew that Canada has three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut).

Fewer knew the correct year of Confederation (1867).

How did this happen? How did we get from understanding basic spelling rules and knowing where Saskatchewan is to complete ignorance? Is there a (L) liberal agenda to blame? Are parents not infusing children with a basic pride and knowledge of their homeland? Are teachers more concerned with leaving at three PM than imparting the most basic knowledge about a country their students are told to love because it has Tim Horton's? How did we become so pathetic?

When I worked for the school system, I overheard a Grade Eight teacher describe Canada as Great Britain's "buddy" and that's why we went to war in 1914. The teacher didn't make the effort to impart on his students how we, as a colony, were obliged to go to war and how some Canadians actually felt it was their duty to go. By reducing Canada to a mere "buddy", he reduced the impact his students might have felt when they learned (hopefully, not from him) how we went to war for the second time on our own. Pure intellectual laziness stunted these minds. What a dink.

Go to the Dominion Institute website and take the icons challenge. How well did you do?

In other news:

You have to laugh at this. Toronto's unionised garbage workers are on strike. The town stinks (in every sense of the word). The city has spared no expense for the over-inflated "Pride Week" but will pare down Canada Day celebrations because, apparently, there are more body-painted pervs than there are Canadians. Now, with only a handful of private workers to clean up the dreadful (and I suspect, biohazardous) mess, the unionised garbage workers are "unhappy".

I am so glad I'm not in Toronto now.

A recount has declared the election in Iran valid. In a way, it's no surprise, given whatever other irregularities might exist there. It is also no surprise that 3,000 were beaten. Don't let anything else remove this issue from the radar.

I don't understand. Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega want another leftist politician to re-take his former country because it is the lawful thing to do? There is a joke in here somewhere.

Mais Non!

President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that burqas- the full-length garb required in some Islamic societies- are not welcome in France given that they are symbols of oppression and failure to assimilate in an open, secularist society.

It is refreshing to see a European leader- a French one, no less- standing his shaky ground. Sarkozy's statement takes grand courage as France is populated with a young, restive Islamic population ready to torch cars at any moment.

Bon chance, I say nonetheless!

For Your Perusal

From Strategic Forecasting, George Friedman's essay about the current events in Iran (kindly reproduced here). There are several good points made here (however pessimistic).

A sample:

But critically, the protesters were not joined by any of the millions whose votes the protesters alleged were stolen. In a complete hijacking of the election by some 13 million votes by an extremely unpopular candidate, we would have expected to see the core of Mousavi's supporters joined by others who had been disenfranchised. On last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the demonstrations were at their height, the millions of Mousavi voters should have made their appearance. They didn't. We might assume that the security apparatus intimidated some, but surely more than just the Tehran professional and student classes posses civic courage. While appearing large, the demonstrations actually comprised a small fraction of society.

I argue that if such factions do exist, we might not hear about them given the media blackout. It is also be reasonable to assume that (as was stated above) they were intimidated and might not be as "savvy" as the intelligentsia in Iran.

Just some thoughts.

Oh Boy...

If President Obama doesn't want to call sides in Iran because he doesn't know who to appease, fine. But don't invite them over for the Fourth of July.

It's just bad form.

Because It Can't Be Said Enough

Globe and Mail columnist Lysiane Gagnon takes Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff to task over his characterisation of the Yellow Quill reservation story.

In Mr. Ignatieff's words:

"Imagining what we share is not easy. Imagining this land is never just to imagine it as it appears to you alone. It is to imagine it as an Inuit person might see it ... To imagine it as a citizen is to imagine it as a resident of Yellow Quill reservation in Saskatchewan would have had to imagine it, this Canada where two half-naked children died in a snow-covered field in the subarctic darkness because their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it, and all you can hope is that death was as mercilessly quick as the cold can make it. What does a resident of Yellow Quill imagine, what do we, Canadians, imagine our country to be, the morning we learn that children have perished this way? It is surely more than just a tragic story of one family. It is a story about us."

What about us as a nation puts us squarely to blame for a drunkard's inability- correction- refusal to safeguard the welfare of his children?

Maybe we are to blame. We are to blame for allowing a two-tiered justice system instead of just one. We are to blame for the soft-serve racism that posits the idea that people of different races or religions are incapable of looking after themselves which means the "White Man" must (as he is obliged) do it. I thought such paternalism went out with the British Empire but I suppose I could be wrong. We are to blame for allowing a "victim/fingerpointing" culture to thrive like a fungus. We are to blame for the avoidance of accountability.

And we are to blame for allowing an American dilettante the opportunity to use a tragedy as some sort of platform.

That's the Chicago Way!

Even Singapore is rising against North Korea's militarism.

The North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, responds in kind:

"It is foolish and ridiculous of our enemy powers to call for more
sanctions and isolation... (do they think) it could make us even raise our
eyebrows one bit?... If they point a gun at us, we will get back with a cannon.
If they point a cannon, we will point missiles and for sanctions, we will give
them revenge. Getting back with a nuclear weapon for a nuclear weapon is what we do."

That's a little melodramatic.

Saturday Night Special

An absolutely minty selection for a sultry evening.