Comments on: Things You Should Be Reading

By: the vegan blog tracker

the vegan blog tracker — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:53:08 +0000

Great list. And good choice on including a couple podcasts (reading while driving…not so good…so this helps!).

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:50:24 +0000

(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.

Sure, Canada has had problems with terrorism (I assume the reference is to the FLQ, a Quebecois liberation movement from the 70’s). But to suggest that the US has in any way learned from our experience is laughable. Equally laughable is the implication that Canada has a homegrown terrorism problem so bad that Americans should fear they might one day be in the same situation (and that they should therefore let their government run roughshod over their constitution to “protect” them.)

Canada is increasingly an open, free, equitable society, while the US is increasingly a police state. It’s sad how Americans need to pretend they’re freer than everyone else and that they’re fighting to give everyone else the same degree freedom. If I had the low level of freedom most Americans “enjoy”, I’d emigrate. Yeesh.

The above-quoted sentence is, to me, so bizarre as to constitute the kind of propaganda I’d expect from China or Iran. It’s as if the US government is trying to tell its people that the US is really just bringing its security policy in line with that of other countries, so no one should be scared about it or anything. Aren’t Americans curious enough to check and see whether their govenrment is lying to them?

By: Marcy

Marcy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:56:02 +0000

K, as someone who was stuck in the meat-and-potato area of Canada (aka anywhere other than Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal), and caught a lot of flack for being both American and French-speaking, I would have to say the French-Canadian “terror”. The rest of the country is pretty Anglophile and to hear then discuss the problems of dealing with Quebec province is to think that the whole place is a seething mass of depraved, English-refusing individuals. To me, they were just folks who spoke French with a hilariously clipped accent. Et voila.

By: K

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:34:56 +0000

`(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.

Seriously? Canadian terrorism? When was this?