Letters to the Editor
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you're taking your handle much too seriously, debaser
it was HUMOR. it was by a CANADIAN. charming and self-deprecating. (go back to teaching sunday school with jared2)
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Thaeus, very thoughtful - compare with debaser
he "calls for a massive infusion of money, as well as wholesale change as far as administration goes (native self-rule)" this has been proved a recipe for failure, not success. really, money? combined with corruption? the native population had a workable society (after all, it lasted thousands of years) but it was a HARD LIFE. who would condemn them to sled dogs and harpoons? but the materials for a modern life, snow mobiles, guns, take modern imports, oil, electricity, metals. that means MONEY. a money economy. just shoveling it in creates what, in your own child would be called a "trust fund baby". to be fully integrated (and so to earn a modern dollar) means not only education, but loss of native culture. it just happens that way. you can't have both. and you can't have it way up in the land of the midnight sun either. what industries are there? mining? using western industry and corporations? it's just a problem and money won't solve it. if *I* knew of native borns i'd advise them to keep their language, but learn english and migrate southward. what else can anyone thoughtful advise? as for (the usual) who say we went into iraq for oil. 3.5% of our oil comes from iraq, that's all. 72% of our imports come from just five countries, (google |US oil imports| the top site, too big to write) CANADA,MEXICO,SAUDI ARABIA,VENEZUELA, and NIGERIA.
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Ah, Anonymous again...
LA as the seat of culture? Really? The town that gave us Dancing with the Stars and endless Survivors? That gave us Paris and Lindsay? Christ man, I grew up in the small-town South. We've got more culture in our indigenous cuisine and music than the ersatz culture of LA can gin up in a millenium.
When business used to take me to LA, the first day I'll admit was a little agog - working with a lawyer whose office overlooked Paramount's back lot from the building used for the original Die hard, spotting Kevin Costner's Mustang on the freeway (OK, it was awhile ago) and the like. But I never confused Bruce Willis or Crash Davis with culture. By Day 2, I was "get me the Hell outta here". I'm an atheist, but if I believed in Hell, it would look a lot like LA. And I'd be condemned to the freeway, eternally trying to get anywhere but never arriving.
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Sermon for today
My sermon for today is this
David, when he gets pissed
Turns away from the facts
And goes on the attack
(His bombast is easily dismissed)
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Phil, when i read that "Anonymous" was just one hour from canada
i thought he lived in maine. instead he lives in manhattan - he ONLY travels by plane. whisked along over the hoi palloi. but despite his wealth, he doesn't dare even be known by a Screen Name! can you take any such seriously?
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re: sugarman (i know I'm just giving myself a headache here but oh well...)
You said:
"that means MONEY. a money economy. just shoveling it in creates what, in your own child would be called a "trust fund baby". to be fully integrated (and so to earn a modern dollar) means not only education, but loss of native culture. it just happens that way. you can't have both."
the Accord and theories (treaty federalism) I was speaking of escape your limited knowledge. These imply the creation of a whole other order of government (to go with federal and provincial). I find it amusing that you would think that money would destroy the culture of native government, when that certainly has not been the case for the other ethnically different provinces in Canada (has federal transfer payments destroyed Quebecois culture? Hardly, in fact, the opposite has is true..Quebecois culture is strong and vibrant and has resisted the folklorization that one sees with the cajuns in Louisiana)
Instead you throw around these facile, juvenile arguments about that smacks of "noble savage" imagery...
get your head in the 21st century man!
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so TOUCHY, jared2! (you must be canadian)
of Course i know! just being funny. i'm from NYC (queens, not manhattan) that's our sense of humor. but i was *much worse* with debaser. how come *he* hasn't written me a poem?
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@david sugarman
No, I can't take Anonymous seriously, but the "LA seat of world culture" was too much. I remember the time my wife and I were in England. We were eating at Hambleton Hall, at that time a Michelin-starred restaurant in a converted 19th century shooting box in County Rutland not far from Cambridge.
In walked a denizen of the Seat of World Culture (for he loudly announce that he had just flew in from LA) in a pair of Levis so starched and pressed that they would stand on their own. In this quiet, elegant dining area, he called the waiter over and asked loudly, "When's the next fox hunt?". (Obviously, this was before the ban. It was the Major government, in fact.) He nodded to his companion (who was rather tarted up) and announced (again loudly) that they had little time because they were on their way to the Continent and stopped over to get a quick taste of quaint English life.
Now I wonder if the crass gent might have been our friend Anonymous. If so, I can see why he prefers that handle. But then I'm just a hick from East Tennessee, so what would I know of world culture?
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Could one take advantage of the military's anti-gay policies?
What would happen to a soldier who announced, publicly (whether truthfully or not) that he was gay? Wouldn't he get an immediate discharge? If it actually worked that way, it would probably be a safer option than fleeing to Canada and living in hiding for the rest of one's life.
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response to earlier letter
Dear Editor (and fellow letter-writers),
I just got back to this thread, so I have not responded to some of the earlier remarks.
My earlier comments were somewhat intemperate, but I still stand by them. I do not go to the US "often" - in fact, I try to avoid going to the US whenever I can - but my work has required that I go there at least two or three times a year.
One of my earliest visits to the US was when I had to go to Washington DC. I like Washington - I've been back there 7 or 8 times since - but I still recall being told that there were certain areas to go and other areas to avoid. Walk to the end of a certain street, but don't go past the traffic lights. I was shown a map where the safe areas were marked in blue and "unsafe" in red - and the red areas were far more numerous. I've lived in Toronto and Vancouver (and several other places in Canada) and I've never had that experience. Sure, there are some "bad" places in every city, but even in East Vancouver I never felt unsafe - minding my own business was enough to be left alone.
I've been to Manhattan and, while I liked it, I was also struck by the presence of a police officer on every block. And I've been to Los Angeles and can't say that I liked it at all. While I was on the shuttle bus driving in from the airport, I realized that the urban sprawl and the rows of rundown houses reminded me of slums I had seen in Manila. I've been to North Carolina, and been struck by the fact that the only people using public transit were non-white - something odd to someone who has lived in Toronto.
Yes, there are places in the US that I like. I like San Francisco and Seattle. I thought that Portland, Oregon, was one of the cleanest and most advanced cities I'd seen anywhere. I think that Charleston is beautiful, though I'm particularly uncomfortable with the American South. I spent three months in Hawaii a few years ago - that was wonderful, though, to be honest, it did not feel like the US.
Beyond this, I've followed the emergence of the Bill O'Reillys and the Fox News people and the general corruption of the American media. To me this is an example of a "horrifying" political discourse.
And, whenever I visit the US, I can't get out of my head the fact that there are about 200 million guns in the country, most of them designed to kill humans.
I should say that I've rarely met an American I did not like. But, the American political culture and all that it allows is one that I find very dysfunctional.
So, while my views are not entirely scientific, I still stand by - and, hopefully, have partially explained - my feeling of relief when I cross the border back in to Canada.
Sincerely,
Shaun Narine