WARNING: Inciting political statements below

The following is a posting I recently made on a message board in response to a fellow poster who asserted that Australia was not only better than the United States, but in his opinion, the best country in the world. It's a little "colourful", but I tend to do that when writing on politics.

Mr. Furple, Australia is indeed a fine country, but you know very well that Canada has been the best country to live for decades. I say so and the United Nations says so. You have either forgotten, dismissed or ignored the posting I made at the NOSY board which clearly shows that Canada has been rated the number one place to live more times than any other country. In fact, Canada is almost always in the top five, currently sitting in the number three spot, one ahead of your lovely country.

In contrast, the U.S. has never cracked better than the number six spot and is currently rated 15th. They just can't seem to get past that "S-word" (Socialism) that their overseers have convinced them spells doom. Ironically (to Americans), the upper echelons of the UN HDI list is always populated by social-minded nations. We seem to have grasped that taking a little more out of workers' pay checks to help those in need makes for a happy and peaceful populace. Americans are stuck in the hell that allows a handful of born-into-money multi-billionaires to stay rich and for millions to be homeless, millions to languish in prisons and much of the rest staging gunfights in the streets fighting tooth and nail for their sliver of the American pie--a pie that is tainted and well past its expiration date.

Another tenet of "the American dream" is freedom and democracy. This dream is really a pipe dream. It is yet another way that the rich fool the huddled masses into buying into this system that forever keeps a small number of people filthy rich and a large number of people...well, just filthy. According to the 2008 Democracy Index (which measures electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture), the United States ranks 18th in the world. This kind of performance from a country who purports to export democracy far and wide. What they really export is imperialism for the benefit of the elite few Americans.

From the anals of time

At my age, pinpointing when something occurred, is sometimes tricky. My best guess is that the following occurred around the early 90's.

On a hot summers day, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, young Gwen Jacobs was walking along the sidewalk of a busy downtown street. She suddenly decided right there and then that it was unfair for men to walk along topless while women had to be uncomfortably covered. She removed her top and nonchalantly continued her trek. In due course, as one might expect, the police arrived on the scene, "scene" being the operative word here, and promptly arrested her.

Gwen, the assertive and resourceful gal that she was, even at her tender 20ish age, secured herself a good lawyer. To make a short story shorter, the court was convinced that she was right in having equal rights to a man in regards to public (un)dress.

The effect of the case was immediate, if not widespread. In the following months, the occasional young, and even not so young, female could be seen exercising her new-found "freedom of expression", most often at beaches, parks or in one case, while watering the front lawn. Each incident that was spotted by a member of the hordes of press that were now scouring all venues they thought might yield another "Gwen", was immediately flashed across the television screens and had everyone wagging their tongues about it. Beach attendance figures broke all records that summer, attended by mostly adolescent boys (of all ages) hoping to get a head start on September's anatomy class.

Well, extremely conservative Canadians couldn't stand for such a public debacle. But what to do about it? When a "lady" of a certain age, in a small public pool, with even smaller children, insisted on exposing her ample bosom, thereby covering up her navel, enough was enough. The police arrested her and somehow managed to convict her of some sort of community standard statute. After that, one or two more incidents were reported to have occurred at the beach and that was the end of it. Canada was proud to revert back to the prude it has always been. And Gwen Jacobs was indelibly etched in Canadian history.