Is Anyone Fed Up Yet?

Is anyone tired of their kid's toys and candy being laced with lead and/or melamine? Anyone? Is anyone completely frustrated with the lack of locally-made products? Has anyone figured out that we've never gotten rid of slavery, just moved it to another continent?

I just recently had an interesting conversation with a store-owner. Her freight charges are 30% more than what she would pay if she didn't have Chinese garbage flooding her store. Believe me, the way the gas prices are going, expect prices to climb. Products will be more expensive and businesses will go under. It's economic suicide. Why we would commit it is beyond me.

The Chinese hate their own people.

They hate the Koreans.

The Chinese will not buy their own toys.

Melamine is not meant for human consumption.

Neither is lead, nor uranium.

Here is a list (one of many) of things that will eventually kill your kids- thanks to China.

If anyone can tell me why corporations and governments continue to kow-tow to materialistic warlords, I would be grateful.

Here is someone else who is tired of melamine in her food.

These people are also tired of "Made in China".

Places like De la Terre , Pan Cafe and Ten Thousand Villages are among the very few businesses with consciences and great stuff to buy and eat.

"Toronto 18" "Youth" found Guilty

Having found neither his youth, his feelings or his stupidity material, a judge found one of eighteen men accused of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts guilty.
Good.

Sarah, Palin and Tall

Sarah Palin can boast of one astounding yet none-too-surprising accomplishment- turning liberal armchair pundits into astoundingly prudish hypocritical snobs. Sure, her vocation of being a mother of five uniquely named children, particularly one with special-needs (hats off to everyone with a special-needs child), is remarkable but no one cares about that these days. Her brief tenure as governor of Alaska (being a small-town mayor before that) has shown she has necessary administrative skills but Alaska is just a freak state- or an extension of Canada (depending on where you live). However, her ability to galvanize the Republican Party and have heaping amounts of scorn from obviously desperate leftists is her crowning achievement.

Sarah Palin is happy. She has been married to the same man for twenty-four years and has five children of whom she is proud. She supports her oldest daughter during her pregnancy, having said before abortion is “an atrocity”. She has been an achiever in her youth and has, in her words, “shaken up” things. Now Governor Palin will have the monumental task of being the second-most powerful person on the planet and the most powerful person in her household. Feminists hate her. How could she be married? How could she have children, especially a disabled one? How can she balance a career and family? Isn’t this the twenty-first century? Indeed. Perhaps the world has awakened to the fact that feminism, like communism, is a colossal failure. Women can’t have it all (don’t worry- neither can men). However much has changed, some things remain the same. Feminism- in all its work, work, work and no-baby glory- doesn't cut it for women these days. Women are rejecting tenets of radical feminism in favour of other ideals. Most women prefer staying at home. Women can raise their children to be smart, respectful, self-sufficient beings without relying on day-care which some studies suggest is detrimental. Women do see abortion as a moral quagmire and not as something “liberating”. Western societies have lived with single mothers for decades so why Democrats gasp at Bristol Palin’s situation is beyond imagination. How Victorian of them! Perhaps it is a matter best left alone as no one is voting for Bristol, anyway, but her mother. To top it all of, she. Looks. Awesome. She does. It’s shallow and unrelated to whether or not she can balance a budget but to catty women (be honest- women are catty) but feminists hate when a woman can look her best.

And there are other reasons why Governor Palin is an “atrocious” choice of vice-president. Her being Christian and pro-life (a double threat if you live in the cowardly political climate of Canada), being a hunter, being a woman. The list goes on. Smart fact checking has punched holes in the most recent controversies but like the anecdotal woman with a bag of feathers, it’s hard to contain the claptrap that spreads through the nerve endings of the Internet. Being Christian in a largely secular society and having pro-life views in a world that is disgusted with things like eugenic and sex-selective abortion but accepts it anyway is something some would rather not acknowledge but live with. She increased funding for special-needs students, not decreased it. The people of the twenty-first century might be out-of-touch with their hunter-and-gather roots but huge segments of the world’s population, including in the US and Canada, still live that way (Premier Paul Okalik enjoys fishing and hunting. I doubt someone will raise issue with that, unless they also hate his golfing). So what? Hunting an animal is not as barbaric as hunting Afghan schoolgirls. One of Sarah Palin’s first acts as governor was to build a natural gas pipeline that Alaskans had clamouring over for years. She can make good on a promise. She has promised to drill off-shore and use alternative forms of energy. Whether these plans will be feasible I cannot say for sure but if drilling off-shore decreases domestic reliance on foreign oil AND cheeses off the House of Saud, I say good. Sarah Palin has come under fire for allegedly banning books in the town in which she was mayor. What had happened was this: she asked a librarian if she was comfortable banning certain books. Nothing was banned or burned. I can say from my experience working in libraries that a book may not be included in a collection for any number of reasons. There are rumours of Sarah Palin being someone’s real mother or not, just some disgusting insinuations that are not worth going into.

That Sarah Palin has to suffer indignities that a male politician or radical feminist would not go through is a testament to the double standards present in North American politics. Had Sarah Palin been pro-abortion and secular, would anyone say the utterly misogynist things they’ve been saying about her? I think not. Liberals must make sense of a world that is complex, raw and often black and white. Established norms of right and wrong can’t apply. It’s childish but that’s the prevailing attitude of liberalism. Moral relativism is just one example of liberal stupidity. Wife-beating is wrong in a WASP neighbourhood but Sharia law, in all its tribal cruelty, is acceptable. Race is irrelevant but is brought up constantly. One’s black friend precludes one from being racist, no matter how one might justify soul-crushing treatment of “those yellow people” who apparently don’t mind working for $1.27 CDN a day. The pro-life ethic is especially telling of one’s attitudes towards everything from women’s rights to race to the environment, even though there is not one iota of proof to suggest that accepting life from conception to natural death equals antiquated notions of hatred. Conservatives are greedy and heartless while liberals are giving. There are no numbers to suggest that. It’s just something said when facts don’t conform to the theories. Whatever. In the end, it all shows how racist, chauvinistic, hypocritical, and ill-informed liberals can be.

And the fact that they are attacking Sarah Palin shows that they are desperate.

Why We Can't Quit

I am not going to pretend the conflict in Afghanistan is fraught with glory or the deaths of ninety-seven men are marginal. Any loss is keenly felt in the world. There is nothing glorious about war, only about the men who serve in it. To leave Afghanistan now would be disastrous politically and nationally. As a country, we promised to help the Afghan people. Our presence makes it possible for girls to be educated, for women to have some form of dignity and for a fledgling democracy to take flight. Maybe Afghanistan will never be like North America or Europe but that does not excuse our moral abandonment.

Consider:

-the War of 1812 was hard fought when the numbers weren’t in our favour. Upper Canada- now the province of Ontario- had a population of only 80,000 people whereas the US had a population of 7.5 million.

-the bloodbath that was World War One cost Canada 60,000 lives. Initially enthusiastic about the war, Canadians enlisted in droves. As the lists of maimed and dead grew higher, support for the war waned. A conscription crisis ensued and Prime Minster Borden needed pro-conscription support. Women (only WASPs with sons overseas) could vote for the first time in a vain attempt to save their sons.

-more than 6,000 Canadian soldiers were wounded or killed after the chlorine gas attacks at Ypres on April 24^th, 1915.

-only 68 Newfoundlanders out of 790 survived the Battle of the Somme (Newfoundland was not yet a province of Canada. It would become so in 1949).

-Vimy cost Canada 3,600 men. Canada captured more ground and guns but lost thousands of men.

-Passchendaele (there is now a movie which bears this name) cost 15, 654 soldiers out of a predicted 16,000. It was considered a victory.

-on September 10^th, 1939, Canada, for the first time in its history, declared war on its own. It was already offering support to Great Britain (American black airmen, who could not train their own country, trained in Canada. Their efforts helped end the war). 1,200 Canadians died in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Japanese killed 550 men after the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. 6,000 were killed in Italy. It was the disastrous raid at Dieppe that cost Canada 3,300 casualties, 900 of whom died. Had Canada pulled out they would never have achieved their objectives during a more successful amphibious landing- D-Day- and destroyed the Nazi war machine.

-though the war is technically not over, the Korean War resulted in the deaths of 516 Canadians (I have seen their names in the War Memorial in Seoul). I had the great pleasure of meeting a Canadian Korean war vet at the Canadian War Museum a few years ago. This down-to-earth fellow could not believe the place South Korea had become thanks to him and others who gave their lives.

We have made our place in history for the benefit of others. Nothing ends perfectly. I don’t think we will ever have that. That does not mean we surrender. The men who gave their lives deserve more than that. We must promise it to them.

The Canadian Election

In what appears to be the most boring election in decades, here is a breakdown of parties partaking in this ludicrous semblance of democracy.

Conservatives: also known as the Tories. Their cowardice and duplicity notwithstanding, they’ve managed to stave off the economic ruin the Liberals have tried so hard to put us in.

Liberals: even weasels can’t trust them. There were the god-awful Trudeau years, the gaffes, AD-scam, Chretien and his fat mouth. The Green Shift threatens to bankrupt us all. If there is a Santa Claus, this won’t happen.

Bloc Quebecois: like the Liberals but more French. Separating the country is their aim.

NDP: the New Democratic Party loves taxing people, just like the Democrats like taxing people. Taxes go to services that don’t work.

Green Party: like the NDP but more environmental.

There are others but really- I can’t force myself to care any more.