Sunday, June 13, 2010

Tom Ricks Ponders Invading Canada

OK, that got my attention. Glancing at the daily email update from the Foreign Policy.com website and Ricks' has a story there called "Time to Invade Canada?" beside a picture of two sweet looking Mounties. Turns out to be a short meditation on how the US and Canada see the Northwest Passage differently. Ricks also supplies a link to a much longer, very thoughtful piece via the Edmonton Journal on the significance of the Passage and of the North in general to the Canadian identity.

Executive summary - we're probably not at risk of invasion any time soon. Also, we probably wouldn't care so much about the Northwest Passage if it wasn't for Stan Roger's, whose "Northwest Passage" song has been considered by many, including the PM, as one of our country's unofficial anthems. Since I have a compulsive desire to tell the world about Nova Scotia artist Kate Beaton, check out her cartoon on the Franklin Expedition.

1 comment:

Mad Padre said...

Noodlng around later tonight, I noticed on one well-regarded US national security blog that climate change is serious business for at least one US defence think tank. CNAS (Centre for a New American Security) has published several documents on how the US military needs to adapt to changing climate patterns, and developing more capability in the Arctic is part of that thinking. See the links mentioned in this post, which blasts Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina for dismissing climate change thinking as mere worrying "about the weather".
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2010/06/dept-really.html

Mad Padre

Mad Padre
Opinions expressed within are in no way the responsibility of anyone's employers or facilitating agencies and should by rights be taken as nothing more than one person's notional musings, attempted witticisms, and prayerful posturings.

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