I am older Mr. Fidel. I am older. I was hired in a wonderful job by Americans in Vancouver and Victoria by an airline that thrives on diversity. That airline and its wonderful American employees proved to me the value of people power.
That job was in Canada which means that it had to comply with Canadian laws. Were that job in the U.S.A., the work environment and its diversity would have been different. A lot different and mostly not in a good way.
Nope. Your fiction is not holding up very well to my real life. I went to Seattle, Boise, Bellingham during my time. I was treated exceedingly well by easy going Americans. Employees made the same or better on either side of the border. Saw more diversity in America than you would have ever seen with "white" Scare Kanada and Pestjet combined.
Diversity is a debating point to kanadians. In America it is debated to death. When you have a black Prime Minister, you get back to me.
And unlike you, I have spent a lot of time across the border. Funny. I see a lot of canadians doing the same. Why is that? If it's so bad, why don't you go to the home of the former Soviet Union, Russia and do all that crossborder shopping, vacationing and general drinking and partying?
Kanada2America
Health care in canada may be a right of the people. But is it accessible? You don't think canada's monopolistic system of health care rationing creates its own social Darwinism? You think everybody in canada gets equal access to public health care? Are you living in 1960's CCF land?
I can't get a family physcian right now. I can't even get my high blood pressure treated. An ambulance call to a location where my car crashed after someone cut in front of me cost me $247 last December! PERSONALLY BILLED TO ME. That was for: checking my blood pressure and saying, "hey you're okay, see ya later".
I have to pay for my own eyeglasses, my teeth are okay but not great - oh yeah, if I work for an employer who has some sort of PRIVATE dental plan, yeah it's covered but otherwise... no.
And you want to talk about how the Calgary Flames jumped the queue for H1N1 shots? Or Toronto Maple Leafs? Or how canadians are actually going to the USA for H1N1 flu shots? Where is your wonderful public health care now? Only three countries keep insisting on this type of system: canada, North Korea and Cuba.
Want to talk about the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver? Crack addicts? They got health care? Social Darwinism is working just great in North America's biggest drug ghetto, right?
You can thank FTA, NAFTA, neoliberal economist Prime Ministers starting from Mulroney. You can thank Harpo for bankrupting the federal treasury with his wasteful and useless Afghan war, 20 years worth of contracts to arms dealers worth close to half a trillion dollars and wasting money on a "Get tough on crime" bullshit for that. What next is our government going to needlessly waste money on? A Canadian nuclear arms arsenal and space program? I agree, our health care system has been eroded. We need people to elect leaders who will spend taxpayers' money on the right things like health care to ensure a healthy population, education and daycare for our children, homes for the homeless, pensions for our elderly, and proper land use and agricultural practices: there is no reason why anyone should go hungry in Canada, a proper unemployment insurance program and strategic planning of the economy: there is no reason why anyone should be jobless or destitute.
The U.S.A. is one of the few countries in the world that has a "free" market based health care system.
So Chretien, Turner and co. They had nothing to do with this? btw - why do canadians keep comparing their health care system to the "bogeyman" American health care system? Don't like to look at the rest of the world? Stephen Duckett runs Alberta's heath care system, but he's already been slammed. What do you expect from a bunch of $45/hr nurses who threaten strikes every three years?
Kanada2America
In America it is debated to death.
Ya they kill everything. They are so trigger happy, there are no more Grizzly bears in America. And they have to come to Canada to see their national bird in the wild.
When you have a black Prime Minister, you get back to me.
They are all the same Obomba in Warshington. And the USSA still incarcerates black people at several times the rate that was true of apartheid South Africa.
You can thank FTA, NAFTA, neoliberal economist Prime Ministers starting from Mulroney.
The U.S.A. is one of the few countries in the world that has a "free" market based health care system.
So Chretien, Turner and co. They had nothing to do with this? btw - why do canadians keep comparing their health care system to the "bogeyman" American health care system? Don't like to look at the rest of the world? Stephen Duckett runs Alberta's heath care system, but he's already been slammed. What do you expect from a bunch of $45/hr nurses who threaten strikes every three years?
Kanada2America
If you've spent so much time in the U.S.A., then you will have heard the talk about people comparing Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy, saying that he will be assassinated (simply because he is black) and speculating not on whether it will occur, but when. Don't forget, they also killed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
You've never experienced the "natural" seggregation of major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta? There are places in America's cities, where as a white person, you don't go. There are places in America's cities, where as a black person, you don't go.
You've never seen that America's poor, America's prisons and the soldiers in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were/are over-represented by blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians? You've never noticed that the majority of rich blacks in the U.S.A. have been 'ghetto-ized' in (certain) sports and entertainment industries?
And you've never seen how kanada multi-segregates with its polite bigotry and calls it multiculturalism. You've never seen how entire neighborhoods in calgary or even edmonton are either black, East Indian, or Chinese. You've never seen low wage companies where the bulk of non-whites work.
You've never seen the "natural segregation" and "white flight" in canadian neighborhoods, because middle class white chicks don't want to shop in "that" Walmart in the north east part of the city; they want to go the nice "white" Walmart in the fancy south part of the city. It's because they don't like all those "smelly, rude, muslim-looking" non-whites in what used to be "their" neighborhoods.
You've never seen how a traditionally dressed African woman who happens to be muslim is denied even the slightest courtesy by white security guards in a downtown office tower even though she speaks better more polite english than those asshole white rednecks, but oh boy, they bend over for the friggin blonde who wants to use the damn phone.
You've obviously never ridden the bus in Seattle and seen how integrated it is and how polite everyone is, even when they know you are an out-of-towner. You've obviously never been to my America, that's for sure. And what wtf does JFK a rich white man have to do with Obama?
Kanada2America
You've never seen low wage companies where the bulk of non-whites work.
And Amerika has an even larger low wage, non-unionized and low skilled workforce as a percentage of total than what we don't enjoy very much here in Bananada, a country that is wide open to controlling share ownership for corporate America since CUSFTA and NAFTA, and even before that. But you say Amerika is the torch-bearer of democracy and justice, so I'll have to think on that one again.
You've obviously never ridden the bus in Seattle and seen how integrated it is and how polite everyone is, even when they know you are an out-of-towner. You've obviously never been to my America, that's for sure. And what wtf does JFK a rich white man have to do with Obama
Ah! You've never seen the Robert Taylor Homes/ghetto(~1960's-2007) neighborhood in Chicago. And you weren't with me when I saw some really spaced-out homeless people begging for change on El Camino Real near San Jose. And you were never kept awake all night in a hotel room in Silicon Valley by poor people rummaging through garbage bins for aluminum cans and food thrown out by restaurants. And you've never seen down and out people and ramshackle houses within walking distance of the "Renaissance" building in Detroit. And your sister in law wasn't mugged coming from work at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale by gun-toting desperados. You'll find that the colour of the street tends to fade as you ascend the floors of corporate office towers in melting pot America. Obama does have a dream, and it's for black and white Americans to die in poverty together. Yes we can - no we won't!
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A,
Say M,
And what wtf does JFK a rich white man have to do with Obama?
Kanada2America
Well let's see, up to the 1950's, the U.S.A. had an official South Africa style apartheit system of seggregation called "Separate but Equal" enforced by federal and state laws. President Eisenhauer changed the federal laws. President Kennedy fought for a Civil Rights bill. LBJ enacted a Civil rights law. Many disenfranchised black people got on voters' lists for the first time. The odd lynchings still took place as recently as the 1960s. Ever heard of the race riots in major U.S. cities in the late 1960s?
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A,
Say M,
Yeah! The Guess Who's? album "Born in Canada" came a good 10+ years before Bruce Springstein's "Born in the U.S.A"
Not that this has anything to do directly with the topic, just a bit of trivia.
When I lived in southern Maryland in the 1960s they still had "white" water fountains, and "colored" water fountains. I went to one of the 1st desegregated kindergartens in 1969, but for the most part, the state was segregated.
My mother, a Canadian, remembers arguing with a shopkeeper in Maryland, who was on about the genetic inferiority of black people. This guy said that the talent of basketball star Kareen Abdul-Jabbar was because of "the monkey in him coming out."
Maybe you don't want to believe me, but believe Spike Lee, who said that Canada is a less racist country than the US. Considering how Canada is not exactly a post-racial paradise where all the people live in peace and harmony, I can't imagine how bad the States must be.
Just noticed this thread is over 100 posts; closing for length.
