Mishmash

There are several topics of note, starting with food.

Food is generally a safe topic unless aboriginal tastes and animal-rights activists clash. A chef in Montreal claims to have received death threats because he serves seal meat. Governor-General Michaelle Jean's choice to eat raw seal heart has angered some who claim that such a practice is "barbaric".

As a finicky eater, I should probably not lord my tastes over anyone but really- should anyone else? Taste is what it is: a sensation and an opinion. Some may adore seal (though I've heard it tastes like rubber) and some may find it truly repellent. The inherent hypocrisy of a society that claims cultural and even moral pluralism never fails to astound me. See how the aboriginal people (in this case, the Inuit) have been thrown under the proverbial bus in lieu of those who think killing and eating seals is gross (I won't even hazard a guess if they are truly animal rights activists or if they have been to Canada) but won't criticise "sentencing circles", a cultural fabrication and complete moral abomination. Some take Master Card and some take the race card. Others will take the "fashionable cause" card. It is accepted in most European countries.

Many people live far removed from the true sources of food. Many people do not hunt, fish, sow and reap crops of all kinds, make cheese or grind grains into flour. More than enough of the population eats food that is terrible for them. This post isn't about that. For those who do have direct access to their food's source, this is a way of life no more alien than running to the super-market or to Tim Horton's. There is a kind of respect for people who can prepare food from its very start. It is a way of life many people have forgotten. For most of the aboriginal people, that life hasn't changed too much (with the exception of firearms and better food preparation and storage).

I lived in a northern community briefly. People around me hunted geese and game, picked wild blueberries and ice-fished. It was how they lived. The Inuit and other northern aboriginal people lived on cloud berries, as well as char, Arctic birds, walrus and seal. The Huron (or Wendat) ate pumpkins and squash, the Plains Indians (such as the Cree and the Sioux) ate dried bison and the Haida ate shellfish and salmon. Even chocolate (an all its delicious healthiness) is a native concoction. When I lived in South Korea, things like kimchi, live octopus, dried cuttlefish, bondaegi and even dog (not always on the menu) turned more than one Westerner off. All or some of these foods cause some sort of ethical problems for people who need a cause. Poor animals are at the mercy of cruel man. Chocolate isn't always fair trade. Can't we all eat tofu?

Well- no. Some people subsist on salmon and moose. It's how they live. Surely the hunting and fishing practices of both non-aboriginal and aboriginal people can't be any more barbaric than some questionable European practices like using human embryos for European beauty products (page six), force-feeding geese for foie gras, confining young cattle for veal, and eating snails (how repulsive!)?

People shouldn't throw stones at glass restaurants or some such thing.

The fate of two American journalists in North Korea has been given little air-time in the popular press. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were kidnapped while crossing a river on the Chinese-North Korean border. They are accused of being spies. If convicted by a North Korean "court", they could face years in a labour camp, at the tender mercies of the guards within. North Korea could be using these women to flex the muscles it thinks it has, as it is doing with the missile launches. I wouldn't be surprised if they used these women as leverage to gain whatever they want to gain. Why the most powerful country on earth is still silent, I'm not sure. There are no oil fields or Islamo-fascists to appease.

Of appeasement, the Chosen One offers not just empty platitudes that still carry an accusatory tone of Israel but are just plain stupid. The Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald is "the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers and skeptics". Well, duh! That's any camp (or gulag or labour camp). Let's not forget the mountains of research on the Holocaust. Good gravy! Why does he say such things. Why not: "Don't deny things that are obviously true! Stop being instigators!" How refreshing that would have been?