Dave’s Good Stuff

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A TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES

America: The Good Neighbor.

Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars! into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I’d like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don’t they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles.

You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -! not once, but several times - and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don’t think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I’m one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."

Stand proud, America!

I don’t know which is more tragic, the original attacks on the Pentagon and the NYC World Trade Center, or the aftermath. I’m not talking about the heroic rescue efforts, or the equally heroic generosity of all those who have donated money, time, and/or blood. I’m not talking about the (some would say misdirected and pointless) clampdown on security at airports.

I’m talking about the death threats, firebombs, and other violence and atrocity carried out against Muslims in both the U.S. and Canada… all around the world, for that matter.

Those that inflict such suffering and anguish are NO BETTER than those that planned and carried out the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon.

NO BETTER.

Maybe even worse.

/. has a thread for personal first hand accounts of today’s events. While not everyone actually posted first person accounts (by definition), I don’t think, in this case it really matters.

This is one of the best uses of /. I’ve ever seen. IMHO.

CNN has enough coverage on this obscenity that I don’t feel I need to explain what happened… as if you didn’t already know.

Instead, at the risk of belittling today’s horrible tragedy, I just want to point out an irony in my life made evident today. Several weeks ago, the building that eScout LLC is located in suffered a bomb threat. We were told to duck under windows and work w/o the lights to avoid the cops kicking us out. Today, 2,000+ miles away, tragically, though completely unrelated to eScout in any way, terrorists bombed our country using commercial jets as missle and fuel, and everyone at eScout was told to go home.

When our lives are potentially at risk, we stay. When tragedy strikes half a country away, we go home.

That irony and testimony regarding complete misplacement of priorities out of the way, my heart goes out to all those personally affected by the absolutely horrible events that took place 12 hours ago. I hope you can someday find peace…