Category Archives: Social Studies

In MR Zine Paul Buhle argues for a renewal of Students for a Democratic Society. Why?

The reasons should be pretty obvious. The empire has overextended itself again. The Democrats have never changed much (and, for the most part, didn’t really want those idealists brought in with George McGovern and afterward — at least not to challenge the basic tenets and power centers), certainly not at the top. If individuals can sometimes be brought over to useful positions, on various issues, it will happen only through building a movement not dependent upon them.

That movement has advantages now that none has had since the sixties, and not only in the fact of imperial overreach. To take an obvious example, the movements in Central America of the eighties were drowned in blood, but the new movements percolating out from Venezuela will not so easily be overwhelmed. Nor has the US economy been up to its eyeballs in global debt until our current era.

Buhle admits that there are lots of obstacles to a successful new SDS, but points to (a) currently a political vacuum on campuses and (b) the escalating crisis of imperialism as conditions that might foster success.

The key, he notes, if following the lead of the I.W.W. and emphasizing:

Decentralized democracy, democratic decision-making at all levels, is the most radical idea ever hatched in North America and the only one with real lasting appeal. It makes sense to demand more democracy on campus, including transparency of where the money comes from and what the corporations or government agencies get in return. It makes sense to resist the re-militarization of campus. It makes sense to reach out to a multitude of others, including antiwar GIs, who come from a different place but share a lot of resentments and positive values.

But students need to speak for themselves, their generation, the world they are already inhabiting and will continue to inhabit. That’s the vision that made SDS great and made it most useful to liberation movements elsewhere on earth.

Those of the famous words of the unnamed U.S. President, played by Alan Alda, in the movie “Canadian Bacon.”

Turns out there is a U.S. plan for invading Canada and it’s been around for quite a while. As Peter Carlson reports in The Washington Post:

It’s a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan — Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It’s a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:

First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.

Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.

Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts — marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

At that point, it’s only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: “ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL.”

Of course it’s happened before (invasions that is): Benedict Arnold (in pre-traitor days) lead an invasion of Canada from Maine, but it failed.

In the War of 1812 the Americans invaded Canada several times, but were driven back each time.

There was the Aroostook War of 1839 (aka The Pork and Beans War and The Lumberjack War), which lead to the modern day boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.

The repeated raids of the Irish American “Fenian Brotherhood,” mainly out of New York. But the Fenians also caused concern in Vancouver, as they organized in Washington state in the 1880s.

Of course the Canadians (well, the British) did invade the U.S. in the War of 1812. And the Brits burned down Washington, DC. Of course, the Brits also took Detroit in the war, but to their everlastiing regret the Americans got Motown back.
Raiding the Icebox
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; C01

Invading Canada won’t be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn’t have a plan.

The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It’s a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan — Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It’s a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:

First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.

Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.

Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts — marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

At that point, it’s only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: “ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL.”

* * *

It sounds like a joke but it’s not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word “SECRET” crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: “The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival.”

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) — then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion — as a launching pad for “a direct invasion of BLUE territory.” That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches — including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as “excellent” sites for a Brit beachhead.

The planners anticipated a war “of long duration” because “the RED race” is “more or less phlegmatic” but “noted for its ability to fight to a finish.” Also, the Brits could be reinforced by “colored” troops from their colonies: “Some of the colored races however come of good fighting stock, and, under white leadership, can be made into very efficient troops.”

The stakes were high: If the British and Canadians won the war, the planners predicted, “CRIMSON will demand that Alaska be awarded to her.”

Imagine that! Canada demanding a huge chunk of U.S. territory! Them’s fightin’ words! And so the American strategists planned to fight England by seizing Canada. (Also Jamaica, Barbados and Bermuda.) And they didn’t plan to give them back.

“Blue intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained,” Army planners wrote in an appendix to the war plan. “The policy will be to prepare the provinces and territories of CRIMSON and RED to become states and territories of the BLUE union upon the declaration of peace.”

The Sudbury Offensive
None of this information is new. After the plan was declassified in 1974, several historians and journalists wrote about War Plan Red. But still it remains virtually unknown on both sides of the world’s largest undefended border.

“I’ve never heard of it,” said David Biette, director of the Canada Institute in Washington, which thinks about Canada.

“I remember sort of hearing about this,” said Bernard Etzinger, spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said David Courtemanche, mayor of Sudbury, Ontario, whose nickel mines were targeted in the war plan.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he’d never heard of the plan. He also said he wouldn’t admit to knowing about such a plan if he did.

“We don’t talk about any of our contingency plans,” he said.

Has the Pentagon updated War Plan Red since the ’30s?

“The Defense Department never talks about its contingency plans for any countries,” Whitman said. “We don’t acknowledge which countries we have contingency plans for.”

Out in Winnipeg — the Manitoba capital, whose rail yards were slated to be seized in the plan — Brad Salyn, the city’s director of communications, said he didn’t think Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz knew anything about War Plan Red: “You know he would have no clue about what you’re talking about, eh?”

“I’m sure Winnipeggers will stand up tall in defense of our country,” Mayor Katz said later. “We have many, many weapons.”

What kind of weapons?

“We have peashooters, slingshots and snowballs,” he said, laughing.

But the Canadians’ best weapon, Katz added, is their weather. “It gets to about minus-50 Celsius with a wind chill,” he said. “It will be like Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. I’m quite convinced that you’ll meet your Waterloo on the banks of the Assiniboine River.”

Gas Station Strategy
As it turns out, Katz isn’t the first Canadian to speculate on how to fight the U.S.A. In fact, Canadian military strategists developed a plan to invade the United States in 1921 — nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

The Canadian plan was developed by the country’s director of military operations and intelligence, a World War I hero named James Sutherland “Buster” Brown. Apparently Buster believed that the best defense was a good offense: His “Defence Scheme No. 1” called for Canadian soldiers to invade the United States, charging toward Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle and Great Falls, Mont., at the first signs of a possible U.S. invasion.

“His plan was to start sending people south quickly because surprise would be more important than preparation,” said Floyd Rudmin, a Canadian psychology professor and author of “Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of U.S. Military Preparations Against Canada,” a 1993 book about both nations’ war plans. “At a certain point, he figured they’d be stopped and then retreat, blowing up bridges and tearing up railroad tracks to slow the Americans down.”

Brown’s idea was to buy time for the British to come to Canada’s rescue. Buster even entered the United States in civilian clothing to do some reconnaissance.

“He had a total annual budget of $1,200,” said Rudmin, “so he himself would drive to the areas where they were going to invade and take pictures and pick up free maps at gas stations.”

Rudmin got interested in these war plans in the 1980s when he was living in Kingston, Ontario, just across the St. Lawrence River from Fort Drum, the huge Army base in Upstate New York. Why would the Americans put an Army base in such a wretched, frigid wilderness? he wondered. Could it be there to . . . fight Canada?

He did some digging. He found “War Plan Red” and “Defence Scheme No. 1.” At the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., he found a 1935 update of War Plan Red, which specified which roads to use in the invasion (“The best practicable route to Vancouver is via Route 99”).

Rudmin also learned about an American plan from 1935 to build three military airfields near the Canadian border and disguise them as civilian airports. The secret scheme was revealed after the testimony of two generals in a closed-door session of the House Military Affairs Committee was published by mistake. When the Canadian government protested the plan, President Franklin Roosevelt reassured it that he wasn’t contemplating war. The whole brouhaha made the front page of the New York Times on May 1, 1935.

That summer, however, the Army held what were the biggest war games in American history on the site of what is now Fort Drum, Rudmin said.

Is he worried that the Yanks will invade his country from Fort Drum?

“Not now ,” he said. “Now the U.S. is kind of busy in Iraq. But I wouldn’t put it past them.”

He’s not paranoid, he hastened to add, and he doesn’t think the States will simply invade Canada the way Hitler invaded Russia.

But if some kind of crisis — perhaps something involving the perennially grumpy French Canadians — destabilized Canada, then . . . well, Fort Drum is just across the river.

“We most certainly are not preparing to invade Canada,” said Ben Abel, the official spokesman for Fort Drum.

The fort, he added, is home to the legendary 10th Mountain Division, which is training for its third deployment in Afghanistan. There are also 1,200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

“I find it very hard to believe that we’d be planning to invade Canada,” Abel said. “We have a lot of Canadian soldiers training here. I bumped into a Canadian officer in the bathroom the other day.”

Going North, Heading South
Invading Canada is an old American tradition. Invading Canada successfully is not.

During the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold — then in his pre-traitor days — led an invasion of Canada from Maine. It failed.

During the War of 1812, American troops invaded Canada several times. They were driven back.

In 1839, Americans from Maine confronted Canadians in a border dispute known as the Aroostook War.

“There were never any shots fired,” said Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, “but I think an American cow was injured — and a Canadian pig.”

In 1866, about 800 Irish Americans in the Fenian Brotherhood decided to strike a blow for Irish independence by invading Canada. They crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, where they defeated a Canadian militia. But when British troops approached, the Fenians fled back to the United States, where many were arrested.

After that, Americans stopped invading Canada and took up other hobbies, such as invading Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Grenada and, of course, Iraq.

But the dream of invading Canada lives on in the American psyche, occasionally manifesting itself in bizarre ways. Movies, for instance.

In the 1995 movie “Canadian Bacon,” the U.S. president, played by Alan Alda, decides to jump-start the economy by picking a fight with Canada. His battle cry: “Surrender pronto or we’ll level Toronto.”

In the 1999 movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” Americans, angered that their kids have been corrupted by a pair of foulmouthed, flatulent Canadian comedians, go to war. Canada responds by sending its air force to bomb the Hollywood home of the Baldwin brothers — a far more popular defensive strategy than anything Buster Brown devised. Moviegoers left theaters humming the film’s theme:

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

With all their hockey hullabaloo

And that bitch Anne Murray too!

Blame Canada! Shame on Canada!

But it’s not just movies. The urge to invade Canada comes in myriad forms.

In 2002, the conservative magazine National Review published an essay called “Bomb Canada: The Case for War.” The author, Jonah Goldberg, suggested that the United States “launch a quick raid into Canada” and blow something up — “perhaps an empty hockey stadium.” That would cause Canada to stop wasting its money on universal health insurance and instead fund a military worthy of the name, so that “Canada’s neurotic anti-Americanism would be transformed into manly resolve.”

And let’s not forget the Web site http://invadecanada.us/ , which lists many compelling reasons for doing do: “let’s make Alaska actually connected to the U.S. again!” and “they’re just a little too proud” and “the surrender will come quickly, they’re French after all.”

The site also sells T-shirts, buttons, teddy bears and thong underwear, all of them decorated with the classic picture of Uncle Sam atop the slogan “I WANT YOU to Invade Canada.”

What’s going on here? Why do Americans love to joke about invading Canada?

Because Americans see Canadians as goody-goodies, said Biette, the Canada Institute director. Canadians didn’t rebel against the British, remaining loyal colonial subjects. They didn’t have a Wild West, settling their land without the kind of theatrical gunfights that make for good movies. And they like to hector us about our misbehavior.

“We’re ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ and they’re ‘peace, order and good government,’ ” Biette said. “So if you’re a wild American, you look at them and say, ‘They’re just a bunch of Boy Scouts.’ ”

The C-Bomb
Canadians are well aware of our invasion talk. Not surprisingly, they take it a bit more seriously than we do.

When “The West Wing” had a subplot last winter about a U.S.-Canada border incident, Canadian newspapers took note.

When Jon Stewart joked about invading Canada on “The Daily Show” last March, Canadian newspapers covered the story.

When the Toronto Star interviewed comedian Jimmy Kimmel last year, the reporter asked him: “Is it only a matter of time before America invades Canada?”

“I’m not sure,” Kimmel replied.

In 2003, the Canadian army set up an Internet chat room where soldiers and civilians could discuss defense issues. “One of the hottest topics on the site discusses whether the U.S. will invade Canada to seize its natural resources,” the Ottawa Citizen reported. “If the attack did come, Canada could rely on a scorched-earth policy similar to what Russia did when invaded by Nazi Germany, one participant recommends. ‘With such emmense [sic] land, and with our cold climates, we may be able to hold them off, even though we have the much weaker military,’ the individual concludes.”

Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, isn’t worried about an American invasion because Canada has a secret weapon — actually thousands of secret weapons.

“We’ve got thousands of Canadians in the U.S. right now, in place secretly,” he said. “They could be on your street. We’ve sent people like Celine Dion and Mike Myers to secretly infiltrate American society.”

Pretty funny, Mr. Etzinger. But the strategists who wrote War Plan Red were prepared for that problem. They noted that “it would be necessary to deal internally” with the “large number” of Brits and Canadians living in the United States — and also with “a small number of professional pacifists and communists.”

The planners did not specify exactly what would be done with those undesirables. But it would be kinda fun to see Celine Dion and Mike Myers wearing orange jumpsuits down in Guantanamo.

Eh?

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

The Nation‘s December 26 examination of the US torture complex includes Tara McKelvey’s expose of the role of academics in justifying US government’s torture policy.

The rundown of pro-torture profs includes: Alan Dershowitz (Harvard), Richard Parker (Harvard), Philip Heymann (Harvard), Juliette Kayyem (Harvard), John Yoo (UC Berkeley), Richard Posner (Chicago), Eric Posner (Chicago), Arthur Caplan (Pennsylvania), Michael Levin (CUNY), Fritz Allhoff (Western Michigan), Mirko Bagaric (Deakin U, Australia), and Kenneth Anderson (American U).

The December 26, 2005 issue of The Nation includes an excellent series of article on US torture complex including Moustafa Bayoumi’s “Disco Inferno”, which examines the history of “torture music” and its use by US miliatary and intelligence agents in Iraq. Bayoumi argues that:

The calculated use of American music in interrogations is less about rallying the troops than destroying a detainee. The US innovation in the interrogation practice of blaring loud noises is the deliberate use of American culture as an offensive weapon. While culture has long been a rationalization for conquest (consider the “civilizing mission” of European colonialisms), and while much post-Holocaust European thought has viewed contemporary culture as coercive and potentially authoritarian, neither colonialism nor the Frankfurt School witnessed the transformation of culture into the very instrument of torture. For them, culture was more the end than the means of conquest.

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Well, I really enjoyed my Xmas presents and I’ve got nothing against “stuff.”

In fact, if we had more equitable distribution of the economic pie everybody could not only have what they need but could enjoy more pleasures.

But, the Boxing Day editorial in the Vancouver Sun illustrates the absurdy of consumerism/capitalism run amok.

While Canadians are queuing up at Future Shop to save 50 bucks on a PSP (10 per store) this morning, The Sun was telling its readers the post-Xmas retail rush is about more than saving a few bucks, rather holiday shopping is moral imperative.

“Break out that credit card and support humanity,” the editors tell us.

While I’m sure The Sun would label me one of those “righteous voices of high-mindedness” that tend to speak over “the profits and pleasures inherent in closing out the year by successfully stalking a terrific bargain,” but do they really think that readers are going to believe their BS that shopping is about making the difference between a “shiny new bike” or a “couple of used CDs” or a turkey dinner instead of weiners and beans for the low paid, temporary, otherwise unemployed retail workers in the lower mainland???

The Sun says, “What you spend on Christmas gifts and Boxing Day sales will flow benefits to people whom you don’t know, will never meet and yet will be grateful for those benefits although they’ll likely never thank you.” Well, that’s probably true, but people raking in the benefits are not retail workers but corporations like the Pacific Newspaper Group who reap huge profits from all those sale ads, banks that issue Visas and Mastercards, and retail conglomerates like Wal-Mart, HBC, Federated, etc.

Makes me want to join the Buy Nothing Day crowd.

Today’s Vancouver Sun published an article by religion and ethics writer Douglas Todd on the “multicultural Christmas” celebrations at Sir Richard McBride Elementary and how students there “balance” their own ethnicity with diverse (sometimes new) cultural traditions.

McBride, on Vancouver’s eastside, is my son’s school and his good buddy Codie Schultheis has some insightful comments on Christmas celebrations in public schools.

When I asked Codie Schultheis, 11, one of the few dozen white students at McBride, what he thought of some secularists’ argument that neither Christmas nor Christian symbols should be allowed in any way in public schools, he looked perplexed.

“I don’t get offended when the school celebrates Divali [the Hindu-Sikh festival],” retorted the Grade 6 student, who added his family is not particularly religious.

“I love Christmas. I just try to be happy when it’s around. I don’t know, people who say we shouldn’t have Christmas in the school here should go to a school in China. I bet they wouldn’t stop celebrating Chinese New Year there because some Canadians were in the school.”

Saturday » December 24 » 2005
Vancouver Sun
A multicultural Christmas
CELEBRATIONS I Sir Richard McBride students balance ethnicity with new traditions

Douglas Todd
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, December 24, 2005

CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
On the gym wall at Sir Richard McBride elementary school on East 29th Avenue is a sign that encourages students to respect each other, regardless of their cultural backgrounds.
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:: Religious rules challenged
:: Hazing the ultimate in grisly initiation rites
:: Innovation includes an interspiritual initiative
‘Tis the season of Christmas trees and Santa Claus expectations inside the old, red brick walls of Sir Richard McBride elementary on East 29th Avenue in Vancouver.

‘Tis also the season of Silent Night and sparing a thought for the hungry; of children growing excited about big family dinners, multicoloured lights and piles of gifts.

Just as when I was a kid at Richard McBride in the early 1960s.

Or not.

There are a few differences.

One is that, when I was at McBride, nearly every student was white — with the exception of two Chinese children (one of whom I had a crush on in Grade 2. Vice versa, I like to think.)

Now, the stately three-storey heritage school, built in 1911 and named in honour of a B.C. premier from the early 1900s, is attended by students who speak at least 22 languages in their homes — most of them Asian.

McBride is on the untidy front lines of Canada’s immigration, language and multicultural policies. Even though four out of five of McBride’s 440 students were born in Canada, the vast majority enter kindergarten as English-as-a-second-language students.

Their most common first language is some form of Chinese, spoken in the homes of 172 McBride children.

That’s followed by Tagalog, from the Philippines, which is the language used in 66 McBride students’ homes. Then comes English (60 homes) Vietnamese (58 homes) Punjabi (33 homes) and Tamil (10 homes).

There are also children whose home languages are Urdu, Japanese, Thai, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Cambodian, or something else.

McBride — located in the middle of a pleasantly jumbled middle-class neighbourhood between Fraser and Knight streets, where small, well-kept heritage homes frequently butt against blocky new houses and unkempt ones — has become one of those urban Canadian public schools that have turned into social laboratories.

McBride has become a living test case, where all the theorizing about multiculturalism by Canadian and international policy makers, cultural scholars, economists, religious leaders, multiculturalism and the politically correct actually comes to a head.

Is it working?

I went to find out how Christmas is marked at McBride compared with when I was a student, thinking it would be a way to check if Canadian-style multiculturalism is proving effective on the ground, or deteriorating into a grand failure.

Could a public school that mixes large cohorts of Sikh, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic, ancestor-revering and atheist kids pull off living and learning together, without many people somehow ending up irritated or offended?

Christmas is one of those times that can get up people’s noses as too commercial, too sentimental, too emotionally demanding, too invasive or too Christian.

But I found a lot of Christmas energy flowing at McBride.

My first discovery was that neither I nor the teachers could uncover a single student who didn’t have a Christmas tree at home.

And, despite their mostly Asian ethnic origins, almost every student I interviewed said they would receive at least some gifts, and have some sort of extended family dinner on Christmas Day. When turkey is on the table, they said, it will likely be served with rice, steamed vegetables or curry dishes.

The widespread embracing of elements of Canadian-style Christmas at McBride suggested to me that it’s becoming a secular spiritual festival appreciated by far more than European-rooted Christians.

Most of the predominantly Asian-Canadian students at McBride seemed as intoxicated as I remember most white kids were in my days at the school; giddy at all the good, Christmassy things suddenly flowing their way.

“There’s just a different atmosphere at Christmas,” said Benjamin Pan, 12, whose non-religious parents immigrated from China.

“There’s the Christmas trees and the lights and the food and the gifts, which all make you feel happier.”

Standing near one of the two decorated Christmas trees in McBride’s hallways, under which were piled hundreds of cans for the Vancouver Food Bank, Pan said he liked at Christmas how “there’s all the kindness and giving to less fortunate people, which should be part of any religion.”

I don’t really have bad memories of my early years at McBride (I left after Grade 3 for North Vancouver), nor do I recall anyone expressing racist beliefs, but the rows of desks were, of course, perfectly straight in my day. The wall colours were more dour.

And I do remember on days that poured rain we were forced to stay for recess inside McBride’s high-ceilinged basement. Some teacher with a British accent would stop our noisiness by forcing us to line up against the basement wall for the entire 15 minutes. If we dared moved, he’d rifle a volleyball at us. That was Grade 1.

Nor are the maps of the world at Sir Richard McBride any longer dominated by the colour pink, marking the British Empire, as they were for my generation — and especially when my mother, aunt and uncle attended the school during the Second World War.

God Save the King and then God Save the Queen were also sung at McBride in those days, and the British-based Canadian Red Ensign was honoured as the nation’s flag.

Since then, of course, in the name of secularism and multiculturalism the singing of God Save the Queen has disappeared from McBride, Bible readings are gone — and the Lord’s Prayer is no longer recited each morning.

I can remember earnestly repeating the Christian prayer sitting at our desks. Even though I was from a non-religious family, I took it seriously, and certainly didn’t protest it. But I also had little notion of what it was about.

Yet, despite the understandable removal of explicit British and religious ritual from Canadian public schools, vestiges of traditional Christmas, with its sacred underpinnings, are still allowed in 2005 to have their moment at Sir Richard McBride.

When I asked Codie Schultheis, 11, one of the few dozen white students at McBride, what he thought of some secularists’ argument that neither Christmas nor Christian symbols should be allowed in any way in public schools, he looked perplexed.

“I don’t get offended when the school celebrates Divali [the Hindu-Sikh festival],” retorted the Grade 6 student, who added his family is not particularly religious.

“I love Christmas. I just try to be happy when it’s around. I don’t know, people who say we shouldn’t have Christmas in the school here should go to a school in China. I bet they wouldn’t stop celebrating Chinese New Year there because some Canadians were in the school.”

Even though I was raised an atheist, I could relate to the way many of McBride’s current students, including those who aren’t religious, were exuberant about the approach of Christmas.

As my friends and I did in the early 1960s, most of the McBride pupils talked about trying to believe in the magic of Santa Claus and his present-giving as long as they could.

And like my fun-loving mom, who seemed to like all the Christmas fuss as much as my brother and I did, many have parents who get a kick out of the holiday. Twelve-year-old Nathan Dong said his extended family always buys joke gifts, like “a pair of pink shoes for my uncle, who’s the biggest, buffest guy in our family.”

Then again, one thing that’s new at McBride, compared with my era, is that when the season comes, the multiracial school also pulls out the stops to celebrate at least two other major cultural festivals — Chinese New Year and Divali.

Chinese New Year, with its emphasis on cosmic good fortune, arrives at McBride in January with gusto. Dragon dancers, Chinese lanterns and Chinese games are brought in. And parents, some of whom run restaurants, serve a Chinese lunch, says principal Sandra Phillips, who has been at McBride for five years.

For Divali, which is a celebration of spiritual light, many girls come to school in October dressed in saris and perform Indian dances at a special assembly. The school’s Sikh and Hindu parents also bring sweets and prepare a feast of Indian food, says Phillips, the most multiculturally enthusiastic and least uptight principal I’ve ever met.

In contrast to many school trustees across North America, Grade 7 student Benjamin Pan didn’t think Christmas, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Chinese folk traditions or any other faith should be barred from public schools.

“We should recognize all religions, and not just smear them together,” Pan said.

To further help bring an awareness of diversity into the schools, Phillips says Remembrance Day assemblies at McBride are often devoted to appreciating families’ historical roots.

As well as following a wide variety of religions, some parents of McBride students are refugees who have escaped war. Many parents, struggling with English, work two jobs, which makes it hard for them to become involved in school life — where the majority of teachers are white, although there are a number with Indo-Canadian, Chinese and Japanese roots.

At Remembrance Day ceremonies, children often wear traditional ethnic costumes, pepper a map of the world with pins showing their own or their parents’ country of origin, and talk about why their parents chose to move to Canada.

To round out the multicultural approach at McBride, Phillips has strived to keep the school’s eclectic ethnic and religious mix of kids held together by some shared values.

Wall posters, for instance, extol the global virtues of “optimism,” “curiosity,” “perseverance” and “honesty.”

Another hall sign champions tolerance by forbidding homosexual slurs, including “You’re so gay.” The poster says such bullying is as bad as racism.

More ecumenical ethics are captured in the lyrics of a song by B.C.’s Holly Arntzen, Soar Like an Eagle, which Arntzen and the principal recently adapted to become McBride’s anthem.

The words to Soar Like an Eagle, which are posted in the school gymnasium, call on McBride students to celebrate their differences at the same time they reach for a common goal — to respect and care for one another.

NO MORE SCROOGE

At McBride, in line with these pluralistic times, what we used to call the annual Christmas concert now goes by the more open-ended title, Winter Concert.”

There is no longer a theatrical production about the birth of Jesus Christ, like the one at McBride in the late 1950s in which my older brother played one of the bearded wise men. Nor did the students perform Charles Dickens’ British classic, A Christmas Carol, in which my uncle played Scrooge in the 1940s.

But McBride’s kaleidoscopic concert would have been a tough event to sit through for a secular purist; someone who wants to erase all aspects of spirituality from the public square.

Multiculturalism manifested itself at the annual McBride concert in ways that make the head swim — as cultures bumped up against each other on stage in confusing, endearing, often amusing ways.

Here are some scenes from McBride’s Winter Concert:

A dark-skinned boy from the ESL kindergarten class, with his black hair tied in a Sikh head-knot, joined his class in holding a green paper Christmas tree in front of his body. He and his classmates then formed the shape of an evergreen and recited, in palpitating English, The Straight Green Tree.

A tall, ethnic-Asian boy dressed up as a roly-poly Santa Claus to help perform songs like Must Be Santa and I’m Getting Nothin’ for Christmas, sometimes accompanied by Asian children wearing green elf hats and gigantic beige elf ears.

A Chinese boy sang a sweet solo rendition of It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.

Two lively Jewish songs were performed, The Dreidl and Hanukkah Tonight (whose lyrics, projected overhead, referred to a “miracle divine”) — even though McBride’s teachers don’t think there’s a Jewish child at the school.

Despite the directions of the Vancouver school board and many others across the continent, the Sikh, Hindu and non-religious kids sang some sacred Christmas carols, including Noel, Noel and Ding Dong Merrily on High (which mentions heaven, angels and steeple bells).

As in my day at McBride, Silent Night was sung.

With its reference to the “holy night” in which Jesus Christ was wondrously born to a virgin mother, the classic carol sounded tender coming from the lips of the diverse singers. One of them, Mahdia Merzed, a Muslim, later said she found Silent Night “sad” but she liked it.

Finally, children from scores of different backgrounds crammed together on stage to sing a rousing rendition of Shine a Light for Peace. For a moment it sounded like a concert from Live 8, the concert series in the G-8 countries and South Africa this year in advance of the G-8 conference in Scotland.

The starry eyed kids were having a ball, enjoying the limelight, their parents’ chaotic camera work and their own often-impressive performances — as well as the sense that Christmas freedom was in the air.

Many of the parents, grandparents and relatives who watched the afternoon concert had taken precious hours away from their jobs. With toddlers in tow, many flowed in and out of the gymnasium with casual, sometimes distracted, abandon.

But many also looked proud and said later they were pleased.

“The children did a beautiful job,” said Selva Kanbiah, a Hindu cabinetmaker from Sri Lanka, who said he had no trouble with the sacred songs tinged with Christian and Jewish themes.

“I think about my children and enjoy what they enjoy. My children like it, so I have to celebrate it. We live here now.”

Bill Dong, a Chinese-Canadian, welcomed the traditional Christmas elements in McBride’s Winter Concert.

“We adhere to the North American tolerant way,” he said. “We respect every culture and religion, but also take everything with a grain of salt.”

When the Winter Concert was over, McBride’s music teacher, Lisa Reimer, who almost single-handedly directed the children through the 90-minute event, looked tired but satisfied.

The number-one reason Reimer says she’s determined to include sacred choral music in the Winter Concert is her conviction such carols are of far higher quality than most of the “cheesy” secular tunes usually trotted out at Christmas.

“I use Silent Night because vocally it’s a really great teaching piece. It seems to be quite magical for kids. They take it really seriously.”

Reimer, 30, says the other reasons she includes a few Christian-rooted carols are that a large proportion of the students seem to be Christian — and, for those who are not, it’s a good thing to learn aspects of the Christian story.

“You don’t have to believe it.”

The Jewish songs are added to the Winter Concert mix, added Reimer, because they have a strong beat, creative melodies and tell some Jewish history.

“It’s a way of honouring Jewish people. The students will meet Jewish people in their lives, so it’s a way of celebrating diversity.”

Reimer, who doesn’t attend any religious institution, says in her five years of teaching music she’s slowly learned to be more “tolerant” of bringing religion-rooted songs into public schools.

Even though the Vancouver school board “technically” disallows sacred music in the classroom, Reimer says, she would go to the Supreme Court of Canada to fight for the right to teach sacred music. So would a lot of other teachers.

There is a lot of crummy winter-oriented music currently being written in the U.S. for public schools that want to avoid bringing religious songs into the classroom, says Reimer, who leads her own acclaimed children’s choir, called Zing!

“Unfortunately some music teachers are choosing the U.S. material because it’s safe and it’s secular and it’s about snow. It’s really scary,” she said.

“It’s a lot better to honour good quality music that happens to be sacred. That teaches us a lot more about diversity than trying to ignore religion.”

SOME TAX THINGY

Sakshi Bali, 8, is Sikh. Her parents are from the Kashmir region of India. With a huge smile, she says she loves Christmas, but her favourite religious holiday is the five days of Divali.

Still, Bali can capably recite the basic elements of the Christian Christmas story about Jesus’s birth in a stable — far better than I could at her age.

“Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem because there was some sort of tax thingy,” Bali said, noting she’d learned some of the story in class, but also elsewhere.

“The wise men visited the stable and people say Jesus had a halo around his head. I sort of like the story of Jesus — except for the end, when he dies.”

It’s almost impossible to keep track of the dizzying variety of cultural-spiritual beliefs held by students at McBride.

But the dozen or so children I met at Sir Richard McBride seemed comfortable with celebrating what have become the near-universal aspects of Christian-rooted Christmas, like Santa Claus and Christmas trees.

All four Grade 3s that I interviewed, including Shawn Thai, 8, whose non-religious parents are from Vietnam, said they receive gifts at Christmas and have family dinners — some modest, some huge, with up to 40 people attending.

At the same time, the students seemed genuinely interested in each others’ faiths and beliefs, including when world religions are taught in class.

“It’s cool. It’s interesting,” said Sakshi Bali.

“When someone’s against religion, I get bothered,” added her chipper Grade 3 friend, Kayashai Jenkins, 8, whose mom is from the Philippines and dad is from New Jersey.

Jenkins sometimes attends Catholic mass. While many of the Chinese and Vietnamese students at McBride don’t explicitly practise any faith, except perhaps Asian folk religion and ancestor reverence, most of the Filipino children are Catholic.

Thaddeus Salvo and Justine Felizarta, both 11, are Canadian-Filipino Catholics for whom Christmas is a big deal. They firmly believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, that he came to Earth so they could be saved and that Christmas is a time when angels are especially active in the world.

“There are angels in this neighbourhood,” said Felizarta. “Sometimes I feel them following me, as my guardians.”

Salvo’s family follows many Christmas traditions, including midnight mass. They also write the names of family members on Christmas tree ornaments and recite prayers for the loved ones. As well, the family often stays up late on Christmas Eve playing the Filipino card game Tongix.

A couple of the non-religious ethnic Chinese children I met at McBride were more lukewarm about Christmas, saying that, even though they may have a Christmas tree and family meal, the holiday wasn’t that big a deal in their home.

But none of the children wanted to get rid of Christmas, arguing that no one in their right mind wants to turn down its presents.

“I mean, what kid doesn’t like getting clothes or chocolates?” said Wendy Chan, 12, whose parents are from China.

Neha Vershaya, a Grade 7 student who is Hindu, said her family becomes quite involved in this festive season.

Her family marks Christmas by decorating a tree, putting a singing Santa Claus figurine in their window and having a big Indian food feast.

The Hindu family also trades Christmas gifts with their next-door neighbours — who are Chinese.

The funny thing was almost every student I talked to, including those who could be classified as atheists, like me in my youth, had struggled in one way or another with whether to remain convinced by Santa’s magic.

Many, like Nathan Dong, 12, described the day they caught their parents in the act of playing Santa. Or they joked that at least they acted like they believed in Santa because they didn’t want to pass on his presents.

The Grade 3s were most cautious about answering whether they still believed in Santa Claus, knowing the subject can be controversial at their age — except, that is for Mahdia Merzed, 8, who was born in Afghanistan.

When Merzed, whose family is Muslim, boldly declared — several times — she has never believed in Santa Claus, it caused eight-year-old Sakshi Bali, a Sikh, to laugh.

Bali then urged Merzed not to declare her lack of belief in Santa around really young and more impressionable children.

You’ve got to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs, the Grade 3s eventually agreed — whether it’s a conviction Santa can fly through the sky with reindeer, or something much more adult.

OLD STRICTNESS HAS GONE

If such a thing can be measured across time, the students I met and watched at Sir Richard McBride almost seemed happier, more relaxed, than we did when we attended McBride 40 years ago. The school’s atmosphere seems more fluid.

That old British-style strictness is gone.

As my relatives remember, despite the ferocity of battle during the Second World War in Europe and East Asia, there wasn’t really much fervent jingoism expressed at the school during those days. But there may have been an unspoken belief among some of the teachers through much of the 1900s that one of the purposes of McBride was to advance British civilization.

It could have been worse. The British heritage did bring Canada, and especially B.C., a lot of good things, like parliamentary democracy and a commitment to individual freedom, basic equality and justice.

But, like a lot of nationalistic cultures of the 20th century, the British ethos may have also given the old McBride a severity and uniformity.

This experimental multicultural era at McBride seems more unpredictable, and more exciting.

And the beauty of the kind of multiculturalism that seems to be happening at Sir Richard McBride at Christmas and throughout the year is that it’s not just about acceptance of differences. At its worst, that could lead to a sense of anything goes, to a kind of cultural chaos and fragmentation.

I expect the approach the principal, teachers and most students at McBride are now taking would gladden the hearts and minds of some of the world’s more notable multicultural theorists, including Princeton University’s Jeffrey Stout, University of B.C.’s Philip Resnick and McGill University’s Charles Taylor.

These philosophers, in their own way, say that multiculturalism, including religious pluralism, can’t truly be successful if people of different backgrounds aren’t willing to agree on at least some common ethics.

That doesn’t mean everyone in Canada, old timer or newcomer, has to celebrate Christmas, which extols universal moral values such as kindness, fellowship and concern for the poor. But it may not hurt.

Without some overarching values, the philosophers say we’ll end up with nations divided into self-ghettoized, ethno-religious enclaves. We won’t have multiculturalism, but something much more vapid — serial monoculturalism.

What are some moral principles to which we can all adhere, despite our different ethnicities and religions?

Scholars name some of those values as tolerance, responsible citizenship, individual freedom and democracy.

McBride’s principal, Sandra Phillips, wonders if all those terms can’t be summed up in the phrase, “mutual respect.”

This cluster of ethical principles sound much like the ideals highlighted in the school’s theme song, Soar Like an Eagle.

Every student is expected to memorize the lyrics of the rousing anthem, which are posted in giant letters — alongside the words of O Canada — above the gym stage, where the annual Winter Concert took place.

The words of Soar Like an Eagle are there to be seen by all the students, teachers and parents who’ve somehow managed to arrive at McBride elementary from all corners of the planet:

The school’s anthem begins:

“We all have our freedom,

share a common aim

We’re all different; still we’re all the same

Come into our schoolyard, what can you see?

Children who respect each other, caring, sharing, all together.”

Then comes the chorus:

“Tell me . . . How do we get there?

Most of us can’t fly.

Soar like an eagle, have an open mind.

Rising on the updraft, sun on your wings,

You can see so many things.”

dtodd@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Copyright © 2005 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

The December 19 issue of The Nation included a a graphic index of human costs of the Iraq War for the US military. The index compares the grim statistics of the current war with other post-WWII conflicts and disaggregates the data by race, gender, geography, etc.

Download the “Iraq Index” here. And read the short companion article here.

The December 26 issue of The Nation is devoted to an examination of the “torture debate” in the US. The lead editorial in the issue states that there is no longer any point in arguing whether US policy condones cruel, degrading and torturous treatment of prisoners.

The “Torture Tree” illustrates the politicians, policymakers, soldiers, and academics who make up the new American torture complex … which includes, by the way, Micheal Ignatieff, Professor of the Practice of Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School and Liberal Party candidate for Parliament in Etobicoke–Lakeshore (Metro Toronto).

Download the “Torture Tree” here.

Here’s an interesting “piece” on dividing the economic pie, written by Holly Sklar—co-author of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us—for ZNet.

ZNet Commentary
Carving Up Our Economic Pie
December 22, 2005
By Holly Sklar

Pie season is here. Pumpkin, apple, cherry, whatever you like. We can use edible pie charts — and some chocolate — to see how our national economic pie is being carved up more unfairly.

Let’s look first at income distribution.

Take two pies — one for 1979, the other for 2003 (using the latest IRS data).

Divide the 1979 pie into 10 equal slices. If the slices were eaten according to the distribution of income in 1979:

— The richest 1 percent of taxpayers would get one slice.– The rest of the top 20 percent would get four slices.– The other 80 percent of taxpayers would split five slices.

Now, divide the 2003 pie into 10 slices.

— The richest 1 percent would get nearly two slices.– The rest of the top 20 percent would get a little over four slices.– The other 80 percent would split four slices.

In 1979, the top 20 percent of taxpayers had about as much income as the other 80 percent combined. In 2003, the top 20 percent had 60 percent of the income, leaving just 40 percent for the rest. The richest 1 percent nearly doubled their share.

Let’s look more closely at the upward shift in income.In 1979, the bottom 40 percent of taxpayers had about 15 percent more combined income than the richest 1 percent. In 2003, the richest 1 percent had twice the income share of the bottom 40 percent.

The richest 1 percent share of reported income jumped from 9.6 percent in 1979 to 17.5 percent in 2003. The bottom 40 percent share fell from 11.3 percent to 8.8 percent.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston puts the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in stark perspective. He examined the income reported on tax returns of the top 0.01 percent — about 14,000 households with at least $5.5 million in income.

From 1950 to 1970, for every additional dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162.

From 1990 to 2002, for every additional dollar earned in the bottom 90 percent, those at the top brought in an extra $18,000.

If you are feeling financially down this holiday season, you’re not alone. Average workers have been earning less after inflation, not more. Average hourly earnings dropped 5 percent, adjusting for inflation, between 1979 and 2004 — while domestic corporate profits rose 63 percent.

The share of national income going to wages and salaries is at the lowest level since 1929 — the year that kicked off the Great Depression. The share going to after-tax corporate profits, which heavily benefit wealthy Americans through increased dividends and capital gains, is at the highest level since 1929.

Income gaps in the workplace have become increasingly outrageous, as seen in the growing gap between worker pay and CEO pay. We can demonstrate it with a pile of chocolate.

Give 1 piece of chocolate to your worker stand-in and 44 pieces to your CEO stand-in. That was the 1980 ratio of average full-time worker pay to average pay among CEOs in Business Week’s survey of major corporations.

For the equivalent 2004 ratio, give 1 piece of chocolate to the worker and 362 to the CEO.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, federal policy is contributing “to a further widening of income disparities between the most affluent households and other Americans.” Households with incomes over $1 million will receive an average tax cut of $103,000 this year — an increase of 5.4 percent in their after-tax income.

The congressional majority is done crying crocodile tears over Katrina and the shameful inequality it exposed.

They’re working overtime to stiff the have-nots with more budget cuts so they can keep stuffing the pockets of the haves with more tax cuts. The budget knife is dropping on Medicaid, education, child care, food assistance and more– even public health, despite loud warnings we are unprepared for bird flu and other threats.

Tell your senators and members of Congress what you think about their priorities, and make your voice count when you vote next November.

With the help of their readers, the folks at The Nation have put together a new book A Dictionary of Republicanisms. Here’s a sample:

abstinence-only sex education n. Ignorance-only sex education [Wayne Martorelli, Lawrenceville, NJ].

alternative energy sources n. New locations to drill for gas and oil [Peter Scholz, Fort Collins, Colo.].

bankruptcy n. A punishable crime when committed by poor people but not corporations [Beth Thielen, Studio City, Calif.].

“burning bush” n. A biblical allusion to the response of the President of the United States when asked a question by a journalist who has not been paid to inquire [Bill Moyers, New York, NY].

Cheney, Dick n. The greater of two evils [Jacob McCullar, Austin, Tex.].

China n. See Wal-Mart [Rebecca Solnit, San Francisco, Calif.].

class warfare n. Any attempt to raise the minimum wage [Don Zweir, Grayslake, Ill.].

climate change n. The blessed day when the blue states are swallowed by the oceans [Ann Klopp, Princeton, NJ].

compassionate conservatism n. Poignant concern for the very wealthy [Lawrence Sandek, Twin Peaks, Calif.].

creationism n. Pseudoscience that claims George W. Bush’s resemblance to a chimpanzee is totally coincidental [Brian Sweeney, Providence, RI].

DeLay, Tom n. 1. Past tense of De Lie [Rick Rodstrom, Los Angeles, Calif.]. 2. Patronage saint [Andrew Magni, Nonatum, Mass.].

democracy n. A product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted [Michael Schwartz, unknown].

dittohead n. An Oxy(contin)moron [Zydeco Boudreaux, Gretna, La.].

energy independence n. The caribou witness relocation program [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

extraordinary rendition n. Outsourcing torture [Milton Feldon, Laguna Woods, Calif.].

faith n. The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary [Matthew Polly, Topeka, Kans.].

Fox News fict. Faux news [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

free markets n. Halliburton no-bid contracts at taxpayer expense [Sean O’Brian, Chicago, Ill.].

girly men n. Males who do not grope women inappropriately [Nick Gill, Newton, Mass.].

God n. Senior presidential adviser [Martin Richard, Belgrade, Mont.].

growth n. 1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. 2. What happens to the national debt when Republicans cut taxes on the rich [Matthew Polly, Topeka, Kans.].

habeas corpus n. Archaic. (Lat.) Legal term no longer in use (See Patriot Act) [Josh Wanstreet, Nutter Fort, WV].

healthy forest n. No tree left behind [Dan McWilliams, Santa Barbara, Calif.].

homelandism n. A neologism for love of the Homeland Security State, as in “My Homeland, ’tis of thee, sweet security state of liberty…” [Tom Engelhardt, New York, NY].

honesty n. Lies told in simple declarative sentences–e.g., “Freedom is on the march” [Katrina vanden Heuvel, New York, NY].

House of Representatives n. Exclusive club; entry fee $1 million to $5 million (See Senate) [Adam Hochschild, San Francisco, Calif.].

laziness n. When the poor are not working [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

leisure time n. When the wealthy are not working [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

liberal(s) n. Followers of the Antichrist [Ann Wegher, Montello, Wisc.].

Miller, Zell n. The man who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton after a particularly tough interview on Hardball [Drew Dillion, Arlington, Va.].

neoconservatives n. Nerds with Napoleonic complexes [Matthew Polly, Topeka, Kans.].

9/11 n. Tragedy used to justify any administrative policy, especially if unrelated (See Deficit, Iraq War) [Dan Mason, Durham, NH].

No Child Left Behind riff. 1. v. There are always jobs in the military [Ann Klopp, Princeton, NJ]. 2. n. The rapture [Samantha Hess, Cottonwood, Ariz.].

ownership society n. A civilization where 1 percent of the population controls 90 percent of the wealth [Michael Albert, Piscataway, NJ].

Patriot Act n. 1. The pre-emptive strike on American freedoms to prevent the terrorists from destroying them first. 2. The elimination of one of the reasons why they hate us [Michael Thomas, Socorro, NM].

pro-life adj. Valuing human life up until birth [Kevin Weaver, San Francisco, Calif.].

Senate n. Exclusive club; entry fee $10 million to $30 million [Adam Hochschild, San Francisco, Calif.].

simplify v. To cut the taxes of Republican donors [Katrina vanden Heuvel, New York, NY].

staying the course interj. Slang. Saying and doing the same stupid thing over and over, regardless of the result [Suzanne Smith, Ann Arbor, Mich.].

stuff happens interj. Slang. Donald Rumsfeld as master historian [Sheila and Chalmers Johnson, San Diego, Calif.].

voter fraud n. A significant minority turnout [Sue Bazy, Philadelphia, Pa.].

Wal-Mart n. The nation-state, future tense [Rebecca Solnit, San Francisco, Calif.].

water n. Arsenic storage device [Joy Losee, Gainesville, Ga.].

woman n. 1. Person who can be trusted to bear a child but can’t be trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have thechild. 2. Person who must have all decisions regarding herreproductive functions made by men with whom she wouldn’t want to have sex in the first place [Denise Clay, Philadelphia, Pa.].