U.S. Says Canada Cares Too Much About Liberties

A cheeky writer at Canada's Ottawa Citizen newspaper has written a story about the U.S. State Department's 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism.

Comments

Re:Screw you, America

[York the Mysterious]

They put out a huge ad in the NY Times earlier this year just to let everyone know that they were the US' largest supplier of oil. Apparently not many people know. -Tim

Re:Screw you, America

[Moofie]

If by "liberated" you mean "purchased for cash money from the people who owned it at the time who were not Canadians", then yes, your sentence is true.

If by "liberated" you wish to draw spurious parallels between the purchase of Alaska and the deposing of Saddam, you're an idiot.

Re:Tomorrow's headlines in the U.S.

[ArcticCelt]

Completely wrong. Canada used to have nuclear weapons but realised that the nuclear arm race was an insane business. In 1978, Canada Prime Minister Trudeau stated, at the U.N., that Canada was the "the first nuclear armed country to have chosen to divest itself of nuclear weapons. USA never asked Canada to stop. In fact USA was very pissed off because Canada did not continue to build more weapons with them.

Re:wow

[shamilton]

Uh, 50% income tax? Maybe 30% on a healthy salary... the highest is around 43% above ~$100,000 CAD.

And round here, these things aren't enforced nearly as much. House is worth $1,000,000, paying property tax for $300,000? Nobody cares to hear about it. And you're certainly not getting thrown in JAIL for dodging taxes.

IRA

[malx]

Astonishingly, there is no mention in the report on the United Kingdom of the IRA.

There is a section on the IRA in the appendix on "other Foreign Terrorist Organisations" which notes that the IRA "retains the ability to conduct paramilitary operations" but it accepts that "the IRA reiterated its commitment to the peace process and apologized to the families of what it called "non-combatants" who had been killed or injured by the IRA" without noting that its activities of "kidnappings, punishment beatings, extortion, smuggling, and robberies" are active and continuing.

The report does not mention that two of the leaders of the IRA Army Council were allowed to become Sinn Fein Ministers in the (currently suspended) government of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Feinn, a major political party in Northern Ireland, is acknowledged by everybody except itself as the political wing of the IRA. The name translates into English as "Ourselves Alone" - illuminating its racist basis. Sinn Fein is not mentioned in the report.

Most astonishingly, NORAID's role in fundraising for the IRA within the USA is not mentioned in the report either.

Americans should realise that many British people who are temperamentally and politically inclined to give full support to American foreign policy find it severely compromised by America's sentimental and hypocritical blindness to the IRA threat.

Re:canadian forces?

[ebbomega]

Right.

Canada has had dick all to do with any military action in the last 100 years.

Learn your history before you start criticising.

You want us to take up arms? How about that time you guys tried to invade us and we burnt your White House down?

Or how about that time that we were busy bombing the crap out of the Nazis while the US was happily being isolationist for 2 years while he tried to take over the world?

Or how about the time that we organized the UN to intervene at the Suez Canal despite England's Security Council veto?

Or how about how we've supplied troops to just about every single UN mission since its inception?

Or wait. Of course none of that happened. It wasn't in the US papers, so it's pretty obvious that Canada doesn't have a military.

I knew a good number of Doctors from my hometown alone (a rather small town in British Columbia) who were working at the MASH units in the first Persian Gulf war who were risking their lives trying to keep UN soldiers alive (including a good number of Americans). But again, it wasn't in any American newspapers so it obviously didn't happen.