Darts & Laurels

• Laurel: Margaret Wente for saying it like it is:
  

  Our soldiers are among the best. But military values are out of fashion. A while ago, the curator of the Armoury museum in Hamilton tried to encourage local school groups to tour the place, which is named after Victoria Cross winner John Foote, a chaplain who risked his life to rescue injured men on the beach at Dieppe in 1942, chose to stay with the wounded and spent the rest of the war in a German PoW camp. The school board said: Sorry, not in keeping with school values.
  
  As taught today, Canadian history has little room for war heroes. Instead, kids learn about oppressed groups. First we oppressed Ukrainian Canadians. Then we oppressed Japanese Canadians. After that, we oppressed working women by sending them back home. "It's not what Canadians did to win the war, but how we screwed up," says Prof. Granatstein, who is regarded by many younger historians as a dinosaur.



• Dart: the execrable filth who are trying to use the memory of Sgt Prescott Shipway to con people online. Find them. Try them. And throw away the key.


• Dart: the slimeballs who try, year after year, to steal poppy box money. One of these days I want to see one of them try that with an actual veteran around. We could make an instructional video entitled "Sixteen Ways to Cripple A Thug Using Only a Walking Cane." I'd buy.


• Laurel: the CF for looking to improve the way they treat wounded members. And you can always improve such treatment.


• Laurel: OCdt Sarah Keller, widow of Cpl Bryce Keller, M.M.V. for donating $21,000 to create a memorial bursary in her husband's name at NAIT. BZ to her, for showing selflessness despite her grief.


• Dart: Ottawa City Councillor Alex Cullen, certified cretin (ht:CanMilBiz):
  

  "I don't believe the citizens of Ottawa would like to see their public facilities being used to promote weapons of death," Councillor Alex Cullen said in a radio interview this week. "That's what the so-called security trade shows are: they promote weapons that kill people. And that's not a business that the City of Ottawa ought to accommodate."

  
  Good on Mark Sutcliffe for spanking him:
  

  Maybe if we don't want war-profiteers exhibiting at Ottawa events, we should ban these companies from the city altogether. I'm sure the estimated 13,000 local residents who work in the defence technology industry wouldn't mind losing their jobs or relocating to another city.
  
  Maybe we should also tell the federal government we don't want the Department of National Defence calling Ottawa home anymore. They, too, can take their thousands of jobs to another community that has weaker morals than Ottawa, where residents would be comfortable living side by side with people who earn a living from death and destruction.
  
  And as for the idea that everyone who works in the defence industry profits from war, then by the same logic everyone employed by social service agencies profits from poverty and homelessness.

  
  Hear, hear.