Salem-News.com Canada articles Page 30

America: A Nation of `Damned Fools`

Americans have to decide to join the rest of the human race on the planet instead of staying with the pig-headed belief that everyone must fit them.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Book review: The Limits of Power: The end of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2008)

Calling himself a “conservative Catholic”, Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army colonel. He is the author of four other books, including The New American Militarism: How American are seduced by war.

Video Footage Reveals Raid on Rick Simpson Home

Here is actual footage taken during the raid in Canada November 25, 2009.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Apparently without a warrant, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raided medical marijuana activist Rick Simpson's home. The video below was produced by Christian Laurette, also producer of Run From The Cure.

This is the third police raid since 2005 on the man who cures cancer (and controls many other illnesses) with hemp oil. Police were aware of the cameras in the house due to posted window and door signs.

Much Ado About Nothing

Nothing can really be everything.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - We were sitting on a park bench watching the joggers go by when my friend remarked: “You know, all these people who jog, go to the gym, eat granola, don’t drink and don’t smoke, are going to be mighty embarrassed one day when they are lying in a hospital bed dying of nothing in particular.”

After I finished laughing, I was intrigued by the topic of “nothing” and decided to check (through the wonder of computer technology) my research notes, only to discover that “nothing” covers “everything”.

Foreign Policy Magazine Article Skews Facts About TV Industry

TV Saving the World? Desperate Housewives a remedy for 3rd World problems? Foreign Policy Magazine goes off the deep end.

(SALEM, Ore.) - The 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing' analogy may be a little overdone, but I also think it qualifies as an over used strategy in this world. It simply references a deceptive act against a person, it happens all too often.

A magazine that I have subscribed to for many years, Foreign Policy, published an article titled "How TV Can Save The World" in their November 2009 issue that appears to serve little real purpose aside from a feeble attempt to save an industry threatened by a superior technology.

America: Four Hundred Years of Bread and Water

The Canadian Comparison: Part 3.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - “The United States is broken,” said Bob Herbert in his December 1, column A Tragic Mistake, going on to say:

“school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding—yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each”.

The Canadian Comparison: Speaking Truth to U.S. Power

What goes around, comes around and it looks like America has returned to its individualistic selfish roots which benefit only a favoured few.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Bank robber Willy Sutton was allegedly asked why he robbed banks. He reportedly answered: Because that’s where the money is.

If you were to ask the tens of millions of immigrants—legal, illegal and aspiring, why they want to go to America, they would answer in a chorus: Because that’s where the money is; nothing to do with the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but simply because that’s where the money is. Poor people have a gratuitous need for money.

A Fish Story

The problems facing our Sockeye and other fisheries are not secret.

(GOLD RIVER, B.C.) - Historically the Pacific Northwest of North America has been one of those spots in the world where food is usually always abundant. The sea along its coast has always been a good provider, and the most important gift that that sea has offered up is the Pacific salmon that once filled its rivers and streams from far west of Alaska to Central California. That is changing.

This year the return of Sockeye to the Fraser River collapsed and finally the Canadian government is ordering judicial inquiry into why this happened.

The Propaganda of War

What we should remember most of all on November 11 every year is the terrible waste of life that wars bring, and our failure to avoid them.

(GOLD RIVER, B.C.) - Last week throughout many of the Commonwealth countries, the United States, France and Belgium, the day November 11 was celebrated.

Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in France, it marked the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the major fighting in World War One officially on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

The Canadian Comparison: Part 1

There’s an old joke: The definition of a Canadian is an unarmed American with health care.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Over the past few months I have been asked about Canada—about atheism, health care and gun control in particular. None of these issues can be addressed in isolation, so a comparison benchmark is required.

Americans, as the primary readers, understand America best, so America becomes the benchmark.

The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers

John Bach McMaster (1852—1932) was an American historian, best known for his eight volume History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883-1913).

(CALGARY, Alberta) - American Exceptionalism is a term that has been considerably bruited about on the Salem-News site over the last couple of weeks. Some readers have been critical of my viewpoint as an outsider who can never understand what it means to believe in AE.

Not having grown up with the mythology, this is true. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that my viewpoint is an echo of what actual Americans themselves say. My arguments have been built up on the knowledge of American thinkers.