Saturday, November 27, 2004

Funny stolen story

update on attribution, November 27: Joe Blundo, The Columbus Dispatch

I stole this from Northern Polemics who claims to have no idea where it came from.

Canadian Border Security

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night. "I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves. "A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumours have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating and organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. "I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said. "We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."

- Author Unknown

Trouble in Ukraine

In today's G+M and there is more from Mark MacKinnon on the turbulence faced by Ukrainians in the aftermath of last week's flawed election. The headline reads, "East, West meet nose to nose in Ukraine" and MacKinnon provides a couple of examples of divergent Ukrainian views that tell the story of an East-West schism.

I'm not convinced that he, nor any one I have read in main-stream media, goes far enough in explaining the complexity of the issue. At the very least there should be broader analysis of the factors that have led to the present crisis.

More than a decade ago, Samuel P. Huntington pointed to a civilizational fault line that ran down the middle of Ukraine. In an article that appeared in the Summer issue of
Foreign Affairs Huntington asserted that this fault line has less to do with political ideology and and geo-political alignment than it has to do with religion.

Further strengthening his contention of a civilizational fault line in Ukraine, Huntington, in his 1996 book
The Clash of Civilizations, expanded on the issue. He pointed to the results from Ukraines 1994 presidential elections where the Western portion of the country (predominantly uniate/catholic) voted overwhelmingly in support of Leonid Kravchuk (up to 90 per cent) and the Eastern portion of the country (predominantly orthodox) supported Leonid Kuchma to a similar degree. With 52 per cent of the vote, Kuchma won the presidency of a region that was seriously polarized along religious lines.

This may be an oversimplification and I can't take any credit for the ideas, but I think it is worth considering. Looking over
reviews of Huntington's book at the time of its initial release, many reviewers took a dim view of many of his propositions. The events of the past few years in the Middle East and the past few weeks in Eastern Europe have proven Huntington to be quite prescient in his writing.

Ukraine could go be the beginning of the next large scale conflict based along religious lines.