not bad. Sure you could raise the bowl and drink but that's cheating! Actually I'm a spork guy myself! School lunches were more fun with a spork. But of course I couldn't stay in third grade forever, but I sure tried my best to!
Canada and Australia were granted the first stages of independence 150 and 120 years ago respectively. To be fair to your point, up until the mid 20th century they were still considered part of the Empire - however that was largely the choice of the nation's themselves.
To be fair, it's really difficult to make sure the sun never sets on you. You'd have to run really fast, and you'd be exhausted too.
As opposed to the US government which came to power through a bloody revolution and has systematically repressed major portions of its' own people for centuries and has been accused of false imprisonment, torture and abuse of political prisoners just like Cuba - hence us discussing the very installation used for that purpose? The US government which supported the Cuban revolution until they realised it wouldn't serve their interests and switched sides, making numerous attempts to undermine and collapse a sovereign state?
Do you think that any of this is relevant to the point being discussed about the US seizing territory in Guantanamo Bay? If so, how?
It isn't, it's a strawman I bit on. If in doubt, go straight to Cuba or Venezuala and shout "look, communism! bad bad bad!", everyone forgets the actual point being made and gets sucked into their usual scripts.
Never saw it that way, but you're right. Still, requiring students to recite the Pledge every morning before school is something akin to a North Korean loyalty oath. We used to laugh at the communists over shit like this.
Kinda like having to sing "O Canada" and "God Save the Queen" everyday in Canada when I was a kid. I rolled my eyes at that. Still they were much easier to sing (and nicer lyrics) than "The Star Spangled Banner"...
The American Revolution wasn't all that bloody. As one of my college professors pointed out, there were several years where very little happened. And the U.S. government for that matter DID NOT come to power through a bloody revolution. The government we've had since 1789 is NOT the same kind created after 1783.
Noticed that he left out the part about it being a US backed kleptocracy and off shore haven for American crime lords to launder money through that in the end became a dictatorship. perhaps 1950s Cuba is too close to what America itself has become in 2019?
I started school here in 1974... Don't recall ever singing GStQ in class. The lyrics were in one of our textbooks, but never part of the morning rituals to god and country... i.e. O Canada/Lord's prayer. Let alone the four track calisthenics routine they had us bopping to...
The students reciting the pledge of allegiance is hardly a nationwide thing in the U.S. It is very much a local tradition. Even deep in the south I've been in schools that always did it and some that never did. It was hardly a national requirement.
This was '68 in Stratford Ontario junior public school. You had to do the Lords Prayer? Was this parochial school?
How bloody is bloody? Wikipedia lists the Cuban revolution to have resulted in something like 5,000 combat deaths plus an unknown but similarly ordered number of executions The American Revolution has no equivalent summary but historians point to combined figures in the region of 31-32,000 combat deaths before disease, starvation or deaths in captivity are factored in. So either the US revolution was bloody, or the Cuban one wasn't, you can't have it both ways especially when you consider that the latter ha much more advanced weapons in play but resulted in far fewer deaths. As for which government is currently in power, of course there have been changes. Castro isn't running Cuba either. That's a meaningless distinction.
The issue with "The Star Spangled Banner" is that it's a bar tune. It's supposed to be sung with a group of people and it was put to the music of an already popular bar tune in order to reflect that. We're supposed to sing it TOGETHER. Instead, we trot out soloists who try to take the song up several octaves and turn it into a spectacle.
As an aside, what @Tracker is referring to was essentially a counter-revolution. The small government ideals fought for during the war of independence were almost completely betrayed in 1789 when the moneyed American establishment (Washington etc.) opted simply to replace the British with themselves at the head of a very powerful state. Hence my earlier comments about the founding fathers being on opposite sides of that dispute.
Yeah, that figures. Countries operate according to the interests of those in power, not the ideals they write about.
nope, regular in Oakville. I do seem to recall the LP being dumped by about 1981 or so. Stratford, huh? We had someone else here for a while who was from around Dundas/Ancaster.
Only 4 years in Stratford, but they were formative. For a while I considered being a teenage heart-throb
I had to move to Toronto and get a mohawk to accomplish that. I had no idea you were a member of Canuckforge.
Oh just swimmingly, best one I've had in ages, can heartily recommend it! It's made shaving problematic though, it's a choice between looking like an egg in a nest or leaving a tuft around the scab. Sexy.....
