[BRIEF NOTE] More on France and Military Affairs

aisb23 has a thoughtful analysis right here. His argument? That poor generalship is responsible for much of France's poor military performance.

[BRIEF NOTE] Israel in the EU?

Jonathan Edelstein has more.

[BRIEF NOTE] Glad Day Gone

From The Globe and Mail:

After 30 years in and out of court and more than $1-million spent on legal fees, lost revenue and seized inventory, Toronto's Glad Day Bookshops Inc. is surrendering its role as champion of gay and lesbian rights in Canada.

The store's most recent battle, a four-year court case that challenged the latitude of the Ontario Film Review Board to censor films, has cost more than $100,000.

Despite winning an appeal that led to a proposal to replace the Theatres Act, employees at the small shop near Yonge and Wellesley Streets say they are exhausted and disappointed they can't continue to fight.

I'm not particularly surprised by this. Canada's independent bookstores have been doing rather poorly of late, thanks to the consolidation of publishers and booksellers. Speciality bookstores like Glad Day can claim a certain loyalty on the part of their clientele; I know that I've demonstrated loyalty, towards Glad Day and towards Bakka Phoenix, an independent science-fiction bookstore located on the ground floor of 598 Yonge Street just below Glad Day.

Taking Customs Canada to court on multiple occasions is expensive for an independent bookstore, sadly. In October and November, they had reduced their floor space to a single floor at their 598 Yonge Street location, diminishing their stock accordingly. News of their impending closure really doesn't surprise me.

I suppose that I'll have to go to This Ain't the Rosedale Library over on Church for now on. In the meantime, I'll have to remember how once upon a time Glad Day was just around the corner and down one block.

[BRIEF NOTE] Legacies of a Dying Colonialism

Last Sunday, at the tail end of the first CFTAG meeting of the year, schizmatic and I were talking about the divergent fates of aboriginal nations in the United States and Canada. He quite an interesting post over at his blog explaining how, in the United States, Americans' perception of the aboriginal inhabitants of the United States tends to be dominated by a myth of noble struggle between native and settler. This struggle ended--in the mythic interpretation, of course--in the natives' obliteration from the here-and-now, allowing for Indian Country's continued marginalization.

While we were conversing on this subject, we two were seated by Starbucks entrance, my back turned to the door. Midway through, I was startled by someone's interjection: "Are you talking to me?" I turned to see a man of First Nations background glaring at us. schizmatic said no, and slowly, the man walked away. schizmatic suggested that Canadians see the First Nations "as people to whom things continue to happen." I find that an optimistic appraisal.

It's somehow fitting that it is the province of Saskatchewan, arguably the homeland of the Canadian social-democratic movement, that is the Canadian province experiencing the most dramatic population changes as the result of the First Nations' baby boom. Observers like Roy MacGregor (in The Globe and Mail in the issue of 30 December 2004, even predict a Native majority population) predict a First Nations majority piopulation by mid-century; as straight-line-projection unrealistic as these predictions are, they indicate the general direction of the demographic trends. There's a fair deal of legitimate concern as to how, given the historic impoverishment of Saskatchewan's First Nations despite what has been criticized as the province's well-meaning paternalistic colonialism. Welfare-state colonialism, whether in Canada or Greenland or Scandinavia or New Zealand, is still colonialism, in its effects and its origins, no matter how well-meaning its founders' intent. The residential schools, after all, were created in order to help the young of the First Nations adapt to Canada's particular version of modernity.

Those past efforts in the northern territories of Saskatchewan will shortly become irrelevant in any case, since in Saskatchewan as elsewhere in Canada the First Nations are becoming as urbanized as other Canadians. Sometimes, as in the case of Newfoundland's forcible relocation of the Labrador Inuit, only today given control of their homeland of Nunatsiavut, this urbanization was precipitated rather brutally. More frequently, the urbanization of the First Nations was caused by the same factors responsible for urbanization elsewhere in the world: diminishing opportunities in rural areas, the perception of greater opportunities in urban areas, the availability of inexpensive transportation and communications technologies. Given the amount of damage already caused to the First Nations' cultural fabric by the various intrusions of Euro-Canadians, well-meaning and other, concern for the future of the urbanized First Nations seems merited.

I'd like to be able to agree with schizmatic that Canadians do, in fact, realize the First Nations' desperate needs. I really would.