It is the Soldier, it was the Veteran….

The Soldier It is the soldier, not the minister,who has given us freedom of religion It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag. copyright: Charles M. Provence not Father Denis Edward O’Brien as some people note.

The Soldier protects our freedoms, our Veterans won our freedoms. We owe them all our thanks and respect. We must remember.

Ottawa, seems a bit cool so far this year but….

2008 has been an interesting year for weather in Ottawa. Many days you just have to wait a bit and you get a completely different type of weather. It has been cool lately and it doesn’t feel like it’s getting close to summer. Looking at the temperature extremes for each month we can see that it really hasn’t been all that warm. So far this year we have reached 26 as our highest temperature and -24.5 as our lowest temperature.

Jan	10.9	(24.5)
Feb	7.0	(24.1)
Mar	10.2	(17.7)
Apr	26.0	(7.8)
May	24.4	(1.8)
Extreme	26.0	(24.5

We would think that things are quite warm but in reality I’d say that we are closer to the daily average temperatures so far this month.

The Daily Average, Maximum and Minimum temps are:

	Daily Avg	Daily Max	Daily Min
Jan	(10.8)	(6.1)	(15.3)
Feb	(8.7)	(4.1)	(13.3)
Mar	(2.5)	2.2	(7.1)
Apr	5.7	10.8	0.6
May	13.4	19.1	7.7
	13.4	(6.1)	(15.3)

What we don’t know about people….

I was watching the American Memorial Day celebration on PBS and they were telling the story of a true hero of the Second World War. It was the story about Charles Durning, he was not reading a story but he was telling us his story. It is an amazing tale of a wartime hero.

Here was a man who went through hell on Omaha Beach and was involved in a number of actions that are well know such as surviving the infamous Malmedy massacre, in which German officer Joachim Peiper had over 100 American prisoners shot dead without warning as they stood in a field. He notes in his biography that he still has nightmares about his wartime service.

He is a successful actor who is still active.

Here is a man to whom we owe our gratitude for his efforts in saving our freedoms during the second world war. He represents a whole generation that ensured that we would be free to be.

How many other people are like him, people who have giving of themselves to give us our freedoms and defend our way of life. We sometimes forget and only see the person who is in front of us. That person may be down on their luck or suffering from post traumatic stress disorder because they fought for our right to be who we are. We have to overlook some of the problems that our defenders face in current times because in a lot of cases they developed these problems while serving our country and us.

I look at my father and realize that a lot of his problems developed when he served with the 48th Highlanders of Canada during the Second World War. We owe them much more than we’ve given them. We must be ready to carry the torch of freedom and fight to keep it when it is threatened.

Canada 11th in Global Peace Index.

Canada moved from 8th to 11th in the Global Peace Index for 2008. Canada is still rated with a “very high” state of peace. Canada’s position changed by -1 in the change from 2007 to 2008.

“The index is composed of 24 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, which combine internal and external factors ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighbouring countries and the level of respect for human rights. These indicators were selected by an international panel of academics, business people, philanthropists and peace institutions. The GPI is collated and calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

As before, the GPI has been tested against a range of potential “drivers” or potential determinants of peace – including levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. Now including 140 countries, the GPI brings a snapshot of relative peacefulness among nations while continuing to contribute to an understanding of what factors help create or sustain more peaceful societies.”

Iceland is the world’s most peaceful nation while the United States is ranked among the bottom third, according to a study released on Tuesday. The “Global Peace Index,” compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world. Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, leading to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, ranked lowest on the index. Afghanistan, another country invaded by the United States this decade, was also in the bottom five, along with Sudan, Somalia and Israel.

Freedoms are being eroded

In the military, I remember taking my combat intelligence training. They had an exercise based upon a real event in our history and changed the details but not the information that was used for the case study. It was a challenge to look at disparate pieces of information (intelligence) and to try and assemble and rework the data into information that could lead you to the solution. After you’ve been through that training it is not unusual to look at data in everyday life and try to assemble it into a trend or arrive at a bigger picture.

Our biggest threat today is defined as terrorism by our respective governments. Most terrorism stems from an individual or group that is trying to impose their beliefs on the masses since they can’t get the masses to follow their teachings through personal choice. Terrorism is a serious threat to our freedoms in more ways than just the actions of a terrorist. How the state reacts to the terrorist threat impacts our freedoms. We have to decide if we want to continue to permit actions that restrict our freedoms are justified against the perceived and real threats. The death toll for Katrina was around 1,836 dead, the death toll for 9-11 was around 2,752, the death toll for the Tsunami in 2004 was around 285,000, the death toll in Burma from the cyclone is estimated at 78,000, the death toll for the China earthquake is currently estimated at 50,000.

In real terms the death toll for known terrorists acts is relatively small in comparison to the numbers of people lost to natural disasters. The key for the terrorists is in their definition, they are trying to instill fear and uncertainty in the general population which forces or allows governments to limit freedoms and take basic human rights away from people in the name of protecting the population.

Western democracies are vulnerable because they are relatively free and allow free movement and allow the pursuit of normal healthy lives without much government intervention. The terrorists achieve their objectives by having governments and the people over reacting and committing acts of state sponsored terror such as torture, no habeas corpus, jailing people without charge or due process. The state can take advantage of the fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the population and impose measure that give them extra-ordinary powers that destroy our liberties and freedoms.

We the population have to be vigilant and not allow the destruction of our freedom in the name of security.

Doctor Who – S04E07 The Unicorn And The Wasp

Nothing like an Agatha Christie mystery to have fun with the Doctor and Donna.

Canada unveils a new, top medal for battlefield bravery

This is our newest top military honour and it is perfectly tied to the past and still represents Canada. This article is from CP. In the second image, the clasp represents a second award.  Queen Victoria’s original award was a hand crocheted scarf made by the Queen herself although not considered to be equivalent to the VC, a total of 8 scarves were awarded.

Canada had at least one recipient of the scarf, Private RR Thompson of the RCR was awarded  the Queen’s Scarf for bravery during the South African Campaign.

“By John Ward, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – What’s old is new again as a link with Canada’s military past and a symbol for the future was resurrected Friday when the Canadian Victoria Cross was officially unveiled.

The new decoration, formally unveiled by Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean, is almost identical to the original Victoria Cross. It has been modified slightly by adding fleurs de lis to thistle, shamrock and rose and changing the original English inscription to a Latin motto, Pro Valore. It retains its frowning lion and the royal crown.

It replaces a medal which for more than a century was the top bravery award available to soldiers, sailors and aircrew of the Commonwealth.

The medal, or VC, is a modest little thing about the size of a matchbook, a bronze cross with a brownish patina hanging from a bit of crimson ribbon. But it is the highest honour Canada can bestow for heroism in battle and even takes precedence over the top level of the Order of Canada.

The VC was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 as a way to mark exceptional courage in the face of the enemy and was the first such medal available to all ranks, from private to general.

It is said that when she was shown the first version of the cross, bearing the inscription, For the Brave, she rejected it, saying: “All my soldiers are brave.”

The motto was amended to read: “For Valour.”

The VC had been in abeyance for a generation, as Canada worked out its own system of honours and bravery decorations. In the end, though, it was decided that the historical links were too strong to be broken completely and so a Canadianized cross was born.

“Canada wanted its own Victoria Cross, a cross that would still resemble the British cross but would better reflect who we are,” the Governor General said.

The links to the past remain even in the metal used to cast it.

Since 1914, British and Commonwealth VCs have been made from pieces of two old cannon captured in some long-forgotten war.

When Natural Resources Canada was creating a unique metal for the VC, it took a piece of this gunmetal, along with a copper medallion struck in 1867 to mark Confederation, plus native copper and other metals from across Canada and melted them into a special alloy, a sort of “tinny brass,” one metallurgist called it.

The smelt produced 65 kilograms of ingots, which were locked away and which will provide the raw material for the cross for centuries.

“I think it was important historically to keep the richness of the mystique of the decoration by keeping the historical link in the metal itself,” said air force Capt. Carl Gauthier of the Defence Department’s honours branch.

“It keeps that link to those Canadians that came before us wearing the uniform, yet it is a medal for the Canadian military of today and tomorrow.”

John Dutrizac of Natural Resources helped oversee the creation of the alloy and the casting of 20 of the new crosses. It was a tricky job, using a “lost wax” technique that dates back thousands of years.

“The casting of the thin section of the Victoria Cross is a challenge,” he said. “There’s a large reject rate where you don’t get complete filling of all the fine detail . . . you have to cast more blanks than you really expect.”

The cross is only awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, or a pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice in the presence of an enemy.

Of the 1,353 crosses ( and three bars given repeat winners) awarded since 1856, 81 went to members of the Canadian military. About a dozen others went to Canadians serving in the British forces or to people who later moved to Canada.

One of the very first was awarded to Alexander Dunn of Toronto, who was honoured for his actions with a British cavalry regiment in the famous 1856 charge of the Light Brigade.

The last Canadian to win the VC was Hampton Gray, a Canadian navy pilot honoured posthumously after sinking a Japanese destroyer in the dying days of the Second World War.

The last surviving Canadian holder of the VC, Ernest (Smokey) Smith, died in 2005.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the heroes of the Victoria Cross “enshrined the reputation of the Canadian soldier as second to none.”

He also noted that Canadian troops are once again risking their lives abroad and one of them will likely end up wearing the decoration.

“We rarely hear about their everyday heroics, but some day, somewhere, one of those men and women will do something so brave, so gallant, so exceptional that we will hear about it and he or she will join the legendary group of Canadian forces who wear the pride of a nation on their chest.”"

The Experts Are Starting To Say The 9/11 Conspiracy Wackos May Be Right

Source: Dvorak Uncensored

Unleashed: Unanswered 9/11 questions

The collapse of New York’s World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 is arguably one of the most well documented events in human history. Less well documented is the controversy over why the buildings fell as they did.

At the time of writing, 357 architectural and engineering professionals have signed a petition which directly challenges the National Institute of Standards & Training’s official finding that the destruction of these massive buildings was caused solely by structural damage from the impact of jet airliners and the resulting fires.
[…]
Current research indicates that an incendiary (thermite) may have been used to sever the massive box columns of the towers, causing the buildings to plummet to the ground at close to free-fall speed.
[…]
“As no reports have come to light of any steel framed buildings collapsing due to fire, and as all steel framed buildings which had collapsed had done so due to explosive demolition, the logical way to have started the investigation of this surprising event would have been to question whether explosives had been used. This apparently did not occur.

William Rodriguez, an acknowledged hero of 9/11 who single-handedly rescued fifteen people from the North Tower, described a massive explosion in the basement which occurred before the first plane struck, pushing him upwards out of the seat of his chair.

The New York Fire Department’s oral histories project contains 118 witness statements which are strongly consistent with explosive demolition. Incredibly, none of this shocking testimony was included or acknowledged in any official investigation, including the 9/11 Commission.

If the towers were wired with explosives by terrorists prior to the planes, that would imply a lack of security on a massive scale that would be worth hiding. On the other hand, how do you hide that much work to rig buildings like that? If terrorists didn’t do it, why would the towers be rigged with explosives? Leaving aside the wacko’s government conspiracies, are other buildings routinely wired to blow to bring them straight down if something happens to prevent them falling onto other buildings? An interesting ‘protection’ scenario for the neighborhood that would be worth hiding for many reasons.

And then there’s this article from a few months ago with quotes from military experts like this one:

“A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman. “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”

Doctor Who – The Doctor’s Daughter S04E06

The Doctor is a father (again) sort of? The timeline is quick on the stories change with each generation. Good episode.

Ottawa Winter – Summary? We hope!

The long range trends indicated by Environment Canada and the Weather Network point to seasonal temperatures and it’s highly unlikely (which means I’ll be wrong 8-) ) that we will have a major snowfall – at most we might have traces of snow but we need over 8 cm to really beat the record. This April we only had 6.2 cm plus traces while last year we’d had 28.4 cm. So I guess we can forget about beating the record and accept that it was a very snowy winter.

This April was also drier than last year 78.6 cm of rain versus 68.0 cm this year. This is probably a good thing to reduce flooding problems across the country.

It was interesting hearing about the floods in New Brunswick, I was at Gagetown doing my Artillery Training when we had the flood of 1973 which was their record flooding. So I can understand what they are going through.

This was our view near the river in Oromocto. You can see the cannon which was almost completely covered in the top center left of the picture. We weren’t inundated but I remember food being limited because the transport trucks couldn’t get through the province. Fredericton was hit hard and even when we got through to town you could still see areas flooded.

Doctor Who – S04E05 The Poison Sky

A good team, Donna, Martha and the Doctor resolve the Sontaran Strategem. Lots of fun, UNIT is even involved.

Can’t wait to next week, we meet the Doctor’s daughter.

The Ewoks Gospel Song – with special guest.

This is my Ewok – Hugo. Just like the ones in Star Wars.