Now that Vancouver hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, these are some questions people the world over are asking...

[Believe it or not these questions about Canada were posted on an International Tourism Website, obviously the answers are a joke; but these questions were really asked:]

 Q: I have never seen it to be warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow? (from England)

 A. We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q: Will I be able to see Polar Bears in the street? (from USA)

 A: Depends on how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto-can I follow the Railroad tracks? (Sweden)

 A: Sure, it's only 4000 miles. Take lots of water.

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Canada? (Sweden)

 A: So it's true what they say about Swedes.

Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed Beaver. (Italy)

 A: Let's not touch this one.

Q: Are there any ATM's (cash machines) in Canada? Can you send me a list of them in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax? (England)

A: What did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Canada? (USA)

 A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Ca-na-da is that big country to your North...oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Calgary. Come naked.

Q. Which direction is north in Canada? (USA)

 A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

 Q: Can I bring cutlery into Canada? (England)

 A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)

 A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is...oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Vancouver and in Calgary, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in Canada? (Germany)

A: No, WE don't stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you sell it in Canada? (USA)

 A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in British Columbia where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)

 A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada? (USA)

 A: Only at Thanksgiving.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Toronto and is milk available all year round? (Germany)

 A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of Vegan hunter/gathers. Milk is illegal.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Canada but I forget its name. It's a kind of big horse with horns (USA)

A It's called a Moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)

A: Yes, but you will have to learn it first.
 

I believe the present misfortune is our great difficulty, in the face of whatever event, in distinguishing the victims from the oppressors.

No matter what transpires our intellectual response is to avidly pursue the root causes and seek out probable guilty parties. But before long we stop short in bewilderment; the causes appear numberless, the reality too tortuous and complex for human judgement.

We have come to recognize that no event, public or private, can be considered judged in isolation, for the more deeply we probe, the more we find infinitely ramifying events that preceded it.

In such a subterranean labyrinth, tracking down the guilty & the innocent seems a hopeless quest. The truth darts from place to place, slipping & sliding in the dark like a fish or mouse.

We have seen first-hand how those we loved and sympathised with as victims can change overnight, taking on the odious guises of cruelty & persecution.

And yet we can't help regarding them as the victims they once were. We don't know whether to understand and pity them as VICTIMS as before, or judge them solely in this new guise. Moreover, it seems dreadful, even incomprehensible, that those who have been victimised can use violence on their own fellow men and fail to see them in their own likeness.

If we probe still deeper, we come to realise that  there is no human being who has not suffered injustice, no human circumstances that do not offer merit understanding. But with such universal understanding, no one remains to be judged or condemned.

Individual responsibility and moral indignation are apparently doomed to vanish from the face of the earth.

The fact remains that those of us who are older can vividly recall a not-too-distant past when taking one side or the other and distinguishing justice from injustice was a matter of the utmost simplicity.

Truth's likeness was clear, unmistakable, and unshakeable. It was close at hand--we always knew where to find it.

We could never have imagined that one day it might seem hidden & elusive. Not only were the events simple to judge, presenting themselves in primary colours, with truth's  radiant image shining above them, not only was our conception of reality far less vast & cluttered, so that we could could act in good faith on our indignation or our approval; we also had no inkling that innocence and guilt are so often mingled, tangled in such tight knots that human beings, with their crude & inadequate yardsticks and their faulty senses, are quite unable to unravel them.

We had no inkling yet that human beings are weak and without any resources to grasp the complexity of the world around them.

This awareness of our inability to distinguish the truth, and pursue it through its endless implications, explanations, and ramifications is a source of profound misery.

When confronted with some specific act that would inevitably be labelled cruel or unjust, we tell ourselves [or are told] that even MORE unjust, more cruel, and more bloody acts are taking place all over the world.

Thus, the sense of outrage is always deferred or projected elsewhere.

When we think we can pin the evil and guilt on a specific person, on whom we long to vent our valid loathing, we tell ourselves (or are told!) that behind this person stands institutions, a maze of powerful vested interests, and that if we consider his position carefully, he, too, is ultimately no more than a defenseless and guiltless victim.

We've also learned (or have been told) that our outrage at or endorsement of individuals is of no importance to the 'powers that be'; that the important thing is not to be outraged or supportive but rather to examine the causes & effects of every event.We THINK (or are told) that it is foolish to use our customary 'yardstick of good and evil'.

We (ourselves) find it crude, inadequate, and pretty much obsolete. Using it feels like using a spade, while our hands have grown accustomed to compasses and computers.

We're ashamed to use such a crude domestic tool. And yet however, as much as we deride its old-fashioned crudeness, we still believe this kind of tool to be indispensable. Without it, the world becomes utterly indecipherable.

True, it may be an inadequate yardstick (and who uses 'yardsticks' anymore, anyway?) for the huge and cluttered range of events we face at present, and true, we no longer know how use it as well as we did, with our hands grown so weak and unreliable.

Perhaps there is some secret way to make such an instrument more subtle, more articulate, more sensitive, to transform it so that it might keep pace with our understanding of current information.

But we don't know the secret way, and we are nowhere near knowing it. And so the tool for judging good and evil simply drops from our hands like a spade, and all we do is lament its crudeness and deficiencies.

Whether we are witnesses or protoganists our instinctive reaction to whatever happens, private or public, is anger or approval.

We are weighed down by love and/or hate, and we are forever seeking a place to unload them. But if we cannot find the right place or the right person since we tell ourselves (or are told) that individual responsibilities in such complex matters are of minimal importance--and so we carry around this terribly heavy burden of love and hate--not knowing what to do with it, until it rots and withers in our arms, then drops to our feet.

And all the while, we gaze fixedly ar 'reality', our eyes glazed with weariness and universal commiseration.

(In short, we're being 'sold'. Just being primed for the 'big killer sale').

To grant any value to our moral judgement is too daunting; to use it feels too shameful; all we have at our disposal today is vast compassion for ourselves and the world at large. ("We're SORRY--but we're in a coma.")

Yet, with universal compassion surely we can't go wrong.

It is the one feeling we can give ourselves to without fear of error. Such a flood of PITY in ourselves and others--remember the the outpouring of charity when the tsunamis struck?--may seem bizarre, given that our world & its vissicitudes are supremely cruel and pitiless, offering us not even the faintest glimpse of the profound PITY that imbues us.

Then again, our compassion is informed neither by intelligence nor by any real will to improve the world or ourselves--it's essentiallly SELF-pity. It is merely the result of fatigue and confusion, like a nervous outburst of tears that leaves us prostrate, but unchanged.

[But, in any case, tears cannot lead us astray, for without a doubt the world has earned them.]

In this kind of world, the winners' faces can very quickly turn loathesome. Victory swiftly takes on gigantic proportions--monstrous, unreal, cut loose from the human community. A world made up of the weak and the wretched hates the advent of winners, knowing they too will take on inhuman ways & unreal, dismal, lugubrious garb. And because we don't know which side to support, we feel somewhat drawn to the side of the losers.

That's all we can do, in our desperate confused quest for someone we can love without fear of error.

Ours is not so much a moral choice as a yielding to the instinct of affinity. We cannot even IMAGINE a happy world in which the winners would not be hateful. Only in the losers can we recognize any kindred spirits--for if we call them ill-fated, battered victims, for the time being, at least, we feel a miséricorde, and are able to at least find ties that can unify us against this feeling of utter helplessness....

With universal compassion, surely we can't go wrong....

In bold letters at the bottom of the Bill, comes the sentence:

"SEC. 102. STATEMENT OF EXCLUSIVE MEANS BY WHICH ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE AND INTERCEPTION OF CERTAIN COMMUNICATIONS MAY BE CONDUCTED."

In other words, you no longer have anything private--your emails, letters, phone conversations, personal info, etc. can now be accessed and monitored by the U.S. government.

Big Brother is watching---and listening--with legal impunity---and Barack Obama voted for this to become law, after a day of abstaining from votes.

You can go to the Washington Post's listings of Bills and voting records to ascertain if this true--

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/

or read: 

TechCrunch.com
Wednesday, July 9, 2008; 4:41 PM

WE the undersigned:

• promise to never turn our backs on a true cry for help;
  
• promise not to plead ignorance when we have hurt some other living being, and promise to act as quickly as possible rectify the damage;
  
•  promise to stop and think before retorting with an unkind word or action
  
• promise to understand that people are self-centered, and that honesty and kindness makes one vulnerable, and that our power lies with accepting this knowledge;
  
• promise to take a deep breath and/or a short walk when we are feeling righteously angry
  
• promise to make time for other's needs, as well as taking private time for ourselves;
  
•  promise to do something that scares us every day [thank you to Eleanor Roosevelt]
  
•  promise to treat every living thing as we woould wish to be treated--with kindness and respect for our/their unique presence as an individual and important part of the Whole
  
• and ~~promise to keep our promises [!]

For we are an honourable species...who treat others with respect and kindness, not with fear and dismissal of their value.

To sign the pledge to yourself--I mean, it's just more REAL when you actually physically commit yourself on the physical plane [hehe]~~go to: 

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/universal-compassion--a-vow-to-myself

[yoiks~~I hope this works!]

August 7th 2008 is the day before the opening ceremony of The Olympic Games in Beijing. On this day we aim to create the world's greatest LIGHT PROTEST, when at least 100 million people from all over the world will light a candle and say YES to freedom in Tibet!

Light the Candle at your home, workplace or in a public place. Put the candle in your Window, or on your desk, or anywhere else where other people will see it and hopefully do the same.

Our light protest will be seen by billions on TV screens all over the world on the day the Beijing Olympics open. We are not against the Olymipcs or anything else for that matter, we stand for Freedom. Period.

On the following day we will issue letters to every head of state in the world to tell him exactly how many people from his country wish Tibet to be free. We will also demand that each one of them will act for the freedom of Tibet.

We will also issue letters to the general secretary of UN, the government in Beijing and to other global organizations with data on global participation.

A light protest is similar to a normal protest (the kind you hear about in the news or in the papers) but with several main differences:

A light protest unites millions of people around the world.

A light protest invites people to take a simple act on a specific moment in time, for a single goal.

A light protest is a new global medium which enhances the power of one person to make a stand.

A light protest will always fight for a noble cause, such as human rights, freedom of choice, thought, belief and so on.

A light protest is non-profit, and non-violent!

Remember, that a light protest depends on each and every one of us making our stand on the same day, and inviting other people & friends to join.