Canada and the First Nations
A lot of people think of the North American West as being long-ago settled business. For all but the Indian reservations, the land and natural resources belong to the descendant, colonial government of the Europeans, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas have been either beaten or exterminated.But the battle actually still rages on. In Canada, population growth is higher among aboriginal peoples than non-aboriginal and a recently-published military report suggests a growing disaffection among the youth of those communities over long-held, justifiable, and obvious grievances, and could lead to what the report calls an "insurgency."
In numbers disproportionately similar to African-Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples in Canada are only 4 percent of the country’s population, but make up 23% of its prison population. Conservatives there argue that the “free market” is capable of resolving many of the growing ethnic and economic tensions, but that has never, ever been the case anywhere ever.
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Perhaps the best written piece I’ve ever read about the city of St. Louis, Missouri is published this week on the Al Jazeera English-language website. Says anthropologist Sarah Kendzior:
In St Louis, possibilities are supposed to be in the past. It is the closest thing America has to a fallen imperial capital. This is where dystopian Hollywood fantasies are set and filmed. It is the gateway and the memorial of the American Dream.
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Admittedly I tend to glance quickly past stories about hockey, but I'm glad I took the time to read this Deadspin article about the New York Islanders leaving Long Island. According to the author, the fading Nassau Coliseum looks today "less like the proud home of a storied hockey dynasty than a preachy lesson about tax obligations."
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Quote of the day: From Julian Assange, regarding the American Empire-- from his current sanctuary, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London:
“The Pentagon threatened WikiLeaks and me personally, threatened us before the whole world, demanded that we destroy everything we had published, demanded we cease ‘soliciting’ new information from US government whistle-blowers, demanded, in other words, the total annihilation of a publisher. It stated that if we did not self-destruct in this way that we would be ‘compelled’ to do so.
“They set the rules about what a win was. They lost in every battle they defined. Their loss is total. We’ve won the big stuff. The loss of face is hard to overstate. The Pentagon reissued its threats on September 28 last year. This time we laughed. Threats inflate quickly. Now the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department intend to show the world what vindictive losers they are through the persecution of Bradley Manning, myself, and the organization more generally.”
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Yay, Seth Meyers is the new host of Late Night on NBC. I'm so excited. (That's sarcasm)
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Does it really matter if my mouthwash is past its expiration date? It's already poison.
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The fundamental problem with RAGBRAI, the annual bike ride across Iowa sponsored by a newspaper that's name starts with the letter R, is that a car always has to be involved somehow—getting to the starting point and/or getting home. They should make it so that you just ride to one of the state borders from your house and then back again.
posted by CM @ 5:49 PM
2 Comments:
Nice column on the Nassau Coliseum. No mention though that it was the home of the longest Springsteen show in recorded history. Just over 4 hours when Bruce rang in the 80s on New Years Eve 1979.
But then they had a screening of "Shoah" there in '85. Ten hours.
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