[Dr Caleb]

Bravo!<br /> <br /> Paint me with whatever brush you wish. There are many people living in far worse conditions who would be proud to contribute to Canada and be called Canadian. (no hyphen) This sounds like one of them.<br /> <br /> Unlike the afforementioned people complaining about the quality of the evacuation service provided for them (for free), from the WAR ZONE in which they chose to live.

[rearguard]

<blockquote>A host of the returnees to Canada were complaining about the Canadian Governments and it's slow response.</blockquote><br /> <br /> Just a few things to consider on the flip-side of this issue:<br /> <br /> 1) The current Canadian government under Harper has sided with the Israelis with respect to the war, and that is just plain wrong and has angered many people especially those who have ties to Lebanon. The facts are that Israel is the aggressor, and what is often not mentioned is that the two soldiers who were "kidnapped" were on Lebanese soil at the time. Israel is killing innocent people (a war crime) using a very flimsy excuse. Dead are children, women, and men who have nothing to do with the war, some of them are Canadians (one was a UN official). Unbelievably Harper effectively is backing up a government that is intentionally murdering Canadian citizens and innocent lives!<br /> <br /> 2) The MSM will twist and turn stories for various reasons, often to manufacture specific consent among their listeners. For example, as a reporter I can twist the story as follows:<br /> <br /> Evacuee tells reporter: "I'm so grateful to Canada for getting me out of the country - THANK YOU CANADA!"<br /> <br /> Reporter askes: "Can you tell me what the conditions were like on the trip home?"<br /> <br /> Evacuee: "Not so good. We had to wait a long time for a ship to arrive while bombs were dropping all around us. There was no food or water on the ship. I'm also really pissed off at Harper for siding with Israel on this."<br /> <br /> Reporter edits his report showing the following:<br /> <br /> "Evacuees have complained that conditions on board the rescue ship were poor, and that they had to wait too long to be rescued. Many are really upset at the Canadian government."<br /> <br /> I suspect that most of the evacuees are very grateful to have been rescued, while at the same time very upset at Harper's position on the matter, and I don't blame them at all for that.<br /> <br /> The MSM has a clear and undeniable track record for lying. Look back at the media attention given to the fabled "weapons of mass destruction" leading up to the invasion of Iraq as only one out of many examples of how the the MSM intentionally lies, selectively omits, parrots, and twists stories to formulate public opinion. <br />

[Brother Jonathan]

I’m going to start on a tangent, with the hope that it will eventually tie in to the thread’s topic …<br /> <br /> Some years ago I was driving to work, in the middle lane of a three-lane(-per-side) freeway. A person came up to speed on an on-ramp and immediately proceeded into my lane, apparently unaware that my car was currently occupying that space. As the fast lane was clear, I swerved left, hoping that the other car wasn’t going to head there too. The driver must have seen my car try to evade, because he almost immediately went back into the slow lane. Once the adrenaline stopped flowing, I said out loud to myself “What in the …” followed by a blue streak of language unfit for man or beast. A glance (I don’t think that it was a glare) at the other car showed the driver focused on his own lane, gripping the steering wheel tightly, looking extremely mortified by what could have been — which was enough to pop my balloon of residual resentment.<br /> <br /> If a near-miss of a car on a relatively empty freeway was sufficient to unnerve me to that extent, I can’t imagine what kind of emotional havoc near-misses of a week or two of artillery barrages might produce on people unused to such events. Even if there were people who did nothing but complain about free sandwiches as thanks for their evacuation, I’d be inclined to chalk such actions up as a process of emotional catharsis, as coming to grips with an up-close and graphic view of just what mortality really means, that most people in Western nations never experience. Please don’t think that they’re ungrateful for their evacuations; they’re just still highly distracted by what could have been a far less pleasant fate had they stayed put.<br /> <br /> Personally, I am not at all offended by the e-mail, although I disagree with its author on at least one point: there are people that are Canadian <i>and</i> not Canadian simultaneously, both citizenships without hyphenation; I happen to be the husband of one such person, and the father of a second.<br />