Category: Politics

As seen on Lean Left

According to Lean Left » Drunken Lullabies, anybody who reads this is supposed to post an anti-war song on their own blog.

Recruiting Sargeant

Two recruiting sergeants came to the CLB,
for the sons of the merchants, to join the Blue Puttees
So all the hands enlisted, five hundred young men
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

They crossed the broad Atlantic in the brave Florizel,
And on the sands of Suvla, they entered into hell
And on those bloody beaches, the first of them fell

Chorus
So it’s over the mountains, and over the sea
Come brave Newfoundlanders and join the Blue Puttees
You’ll fight in Flanders, and at Galipoli
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Then the call came from London, for the last July drive
To the trenches with the regiment, prepare yourselves to die
The roll call next morning, just a handful survived.
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Chorus

The stone men on Water Street still cry for the day
When the pride of the city went marching away
A thousand men slaughtered, to hear the King say
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Chorus x3

The Blue Puttees are the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, later given Royal assent as the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

The song refers to Suvla, which was part of the Gallolipoli battle, which the ANZACs seem to think was their own private hell, but they also shared it with the 1st Newfoundland and a few British Corps. The “last July drive” part is a reference to Beaumont-Hamel, one of the more atrocious parts of the atrocity that was the Battle of the Somme. 800+ members of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment went over the top on the first day, and the next day 68 of them were still standing for roll call.

People laughed at the line in Braveheart where Longshanks refers to sending Irish troopers because they were cheaper than arrows. But there was at least a touch of that attitude still prevelent in the British Army officer corps in 1917. As my dad said a little while ago, if commanders tried that sort of thing today they’d be tried as war criminals by their own side.

You know what sucks?

– Dental surgery sucks. I got a temporary crown this morning. Between the numb mouth, the screeching of the drill and the feel of things being ground away inside you, or the two people with their hands in your mouth, one of whom is constantly telling you to open wider as your fight with all your mental might to not bite them and tell them to get the hell away from your mouth, there isn’t much to like. It’s four hours now, and I’m getting the feeling back in my mouth, but this temporary crown feels like a foriegn object in my mouth. At least it’s not cutting into my tongue the way the fragments of tooth were doing all weekend, but I probably bit my tongue a few times while it was numb.

– Canadian voters suck. It’s almost as if they’re afraid of insulting politicians they used to like, so they keep voting for the PM who gets more and more unpopular, but wait for him to retire and then vote his replacement out of office out of anger at the one who just retired. They did it to Trudeau/Turner, Mulrooney/Campbell, and now it looks like they’re going to vent their anger at Chretien’s arrogance and corruption on Paul Martin, who seemed like a pretty decent PM for a change. I’m just hoping and praying that Harper doesn’t get a majority, because he would be a giant step backwards for social liberalism in Canada. Plus, Canada is the only member of the G7 with a balanced budget, so why vote in a guy whose going to fuck with that to give giant tax breaks to the rich?

Oh Canada

You know, there are times when I really miss living in Canada. Two examples from today:

Calling for my weather briefing for the flight home: Most briefers at the Buffalo AFSS read you the text, exactly as you get it from the computer yourself using DUATS (Direct User Access Terminal System), and read at approximately broadband speeds. If you get a better than average one, he might summarize all the local forecasts like “four to six thousand scattered to broken”, which is fine and a good time saver and short hand. I rarely get any insight or analysis. But every single time I talk to the briefers at Gatineau Flight Service, I get advice, I get analysis, I get exactly what I need. Today, I’d seen the TAFs showing the possibility of thunderstorms during the period, but only as temporary (TEMPO) or widely scattered. I looked at the Intellicast Northeast Radar Loop, and didn’t see any signs of these thunderstorms so I breathed a sign of relief. When I called for my briefing, the briefer told me what to expect (marginal VFR conditions, high ceilings but very low visibility in haze), and then he explained that when the TAFs were issued the forecasters were unsure about where the atmospheric instability was going, but it seemed to have dissipated and moved off north of Montreal, and in his opinion I wouldn’t have to worry about anything developing along my route during my flight. He twice asked me if I had any more weather questions. I couldn’t have asked for a better briefing, and while I could see the far off lightning on the Lance’s Stormscope on the way home, there was no evidence of any activity anywhere near my route.

The other example was listening to Cross Country Checkup on CBC radio. They were discussing a pretty controversial topic, the post release restrictions on Karla Homulka. My favourite Canadian expatriate, Maddy, hated Rex Murphy, but to me he’s what a radio host on a call in show should be. He took calls from “law and order” types who lamented the fact that Canada doesn’t have the death penalty, people who expressed a fond hope that she’ll be murdered after her release, all the way to people who felt that while it’s unfortunate that the police botched the investigation so badly that they had to make a deal with devil, but they made a deal with her and so it isn’t fair to impose further penalties after she served her sentence, either because the restrictions are a slippery slope that could lead to life-time restrictions on lesser and lesser crimes, or just because it would make it harder to make these sorts of deals in cases where the police really do need some cooperation to save lives. And with all these callers expressing all these varied views, Rex was polite, he found something to agree with them and amplify, and sometime to challenge with probing further questions. He gently kept them on topic and got them to say their piece and get off. He never yelled at anybody, he never shouted anybody down or cut off their microphones, he never insulted them or made disparaging remarks about them after they were off the show. Such a huge difference to the Air America show I heard on the drive home from the airport, or any other call in show on either left wing or right wing radio in America.