Imbecilic email still making the rounds

punditman says:

Recently, I received the following forwarded email, which has a kind of innocent jingoism about it:

"Someone in Pakistan advertised in a newspaper an offer of reward to anyone who kills a Canadian -- any Canadian. In response, an Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is:

A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan.

A Canadian may also be a Cree, Metis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians. A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan. The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds. But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected.

These are the people who built Canada. You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbor. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian."

Nice thoughts. Too bad it is hokum. A dead giveaway that this is recycled gibberish is the claim that there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan. What imbecilic nonsense! In fact, 1.9% of the population in Canada is Muslim compared to 99% in Afghanistan and yet both countries have roughly the same population: 33,390,141 and 31,889,923 respectively (source: CIA World Fact Book--ironically). Add to that the American spelling of "neighbor." Then again, the pro war folks rarely do their homework.

A quick google search reveals a strikingly similar five-year-old email, but in fact it was talking about Americans, not Canadians. See the following link (scroll down to the part entitled "An American"):
http://www.saw.co.za/newsletters/archive/sawmail_150402.html#adhoc

It is possible the whole thing is just some internet urban myth -- was there such an ad in a Pakistan newspaper? Did an Australian dentist write an editorial? Where was it published? Who knows?

The tone of the “original” piece equates America with all things bright and beautiful, while the copy-cat version merely substitutes Americans with Canadians.

The same basic email appears on David Kilgour's personal website, he being the former Liberal Member of Parliament for the Alberta riding of Edmonton Southeast: http://www.david-kilgour.com/2007/Nov_21_2007_06.htm

More Muslims in Canada than Afghanistan? Sloppy, David, sloppy!

The whole thing just smacks of cheap flag-waving, which politicians thrive upon.

The Australian dentist who supposedly wrote this editorial undoubtedly did so at least five years ago. That was when the post-911 sympathy-for-America phenomenon was at its peak -- before the Bush administration set to work to unravel it. Since then, the seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing turmoil throughout much of the Middle East and a constant stream of scandals and malfeasance -- from torture, to rendition, to the new cooked-up lies about Iran's nuclear program -- have used up that "compassion capital" several times over.

Thus I remain suspicious of the agenda of the person who first “Canadianized” this forwarded email because no Aussie dentist ever wrote any such thing about Canadians. That much is true.

It always pays to do a little background research -- for what it's worth.