Link Banana

While Democrats can always threaten to flee to Canada in the event of an election loss, where can conservatives flee to?

Though this quiz is a tad on the detail-oriented side, I did enjoy it. I’m guessing you can do better than 23, but you’ll need to be able to tell an Estonian accents from a Lithuanian. Or a Canadian from an American.

(via Passport)

Every once in a while I like to see stories about high-seas piracy. I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t because of fictions of peglegs and eyepatchs.

In any case, the Canadians have stepped up and are providing a frigate for safe passage of much needed food shipments from the World Food Program through the pirate-infested waters and to the famine-stricken country.

This Green.view column raises some valuable points about Canada’s supposedly brutal seal hunts:

Still, groups such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) call it inhumane, and they have successfully lobbied politicians across Europe. In 2007, Belgium and the Netherlands banned trade in seal products. Other countries—perhaps even the whole European Union—may soon follow suit.

IFAW records hundreds of hours of video footage of the annual hunt, in which seals are killed either by shooting or with a hakapik, a heavy wooden club with a pick. Although IFAW feels the hunt is inhumane, a study published in the Canadian Veterinary Journal in 2002 concluded that most seals (about 98%) were killed in an acceptably humane manner.

Maybe it’s just me, but this statistic seems surprising:

Since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, more than 16,000 troops — mostly Army — have deserted. Antiwar groups contend the number is much higher, with many of the runaways quietly discharged.

For context, it’s from a rather interesting story about Iraq-era deserters in Canada and the support they’re getting from Vietnam-era deserters.

(via Passport)

The Economist has put together a pretty interesting graph of the personal tax burden in OECD — generally “rich” — countries. The United States and Canada are both near the middle of the pack, though Canada’s lower (which surprised me).