Red Ensign Standard #7

is up at myrick this week.

Much bloggy goodness ensues!

Red Ensign Standard #6

is up at Taylor and Company this week...

And Chris Taylor kicks my butt when it comes to formatting the entries.

Some interesting stuff among the group this week.

There's almost enough material bi-weekly for an online magazine...Eh, Nick?

Red Ensign #5

is up at The Tiger in Winter



Canada's history has always been more hard and bloody than we've been led to believe. The early history of the RCMP was about surviving in the harsh conditions of the Canadian wilderness and mastering it. The Canadians who fought in World Wars One and Two were tough bastards who had a long tradition of tough bastards to live up to.

Go see Ben's roundup at The Tiger in Winter. Read. Enjoy. Think. Argue. Do something.



That needs to be changed. We have a lot of tough bastards to live up to.

Red Ensign #4

...is at BumfOnline.

Red Ensign #3

The Last Amazon is hosting the Red Ensign Standard this week. Lots of good links from the ever-growing Red Ensign Brigade (20 members now!)

Lots of good stuff. Check it out.

Too many blogs, too little time

As a consequence of hosting the Red Ensign Standard I've got quite a few more blogs to read and put in my newsreader. For those that don't know what a newsreader is, well it's a program that collects newsfeeds from various sources and puts it in a consistent, headline scannable program. The one I've been using is called Sharpreader and it's free. The nice thing is that it lets you scan all your favourite reads at a glance and lets you know if anything new has been written without having to surf over to blog after blog. A real time saver.

But the only problem is that blogspot blogs don't seem to support it, and there are still a lot of good writers on blogspot...Oh well, some time saved is better than none.

---

A big thanks to all the Red Ensign members and others who've sent me compliments on the Red Ensign Standard. It was fun hosting and I look forward to the next one. Hopefully I write something worthy of the show...That's the good part about being host - you don't have to provide any posts of your own if you don't want to. MUAHAHAHA!

Red Ensign Standard

This is actually the second installment of The Red Ensign Standard. The first was a post by John at Castle Argghhh! that in hindsight seems like the most obvious good idea: a roundup of postings from what's become known by some as the Red Ensign Brigade.

As host, I thought I'd start off with a little about why I'm flying the Red Ensign in this little corner of the web. It's not for family history reasons. In fact, I'm quite certain that most if not all of my relatives fought against this banner in both World Wars. But my parents came to Canada looking for a better life from a shattered Europe, and by God they found it. Canada was and still is one of the only countries on this planet where success and security is still an output of how hard you work when you arrive. I truly believe this.

At the time, my country was flying this flag.



So it might seem weird for a blog called Raging Kraut, haunted by a ghostly Otto von Bismarck, to be flying a Red Ensign; to throw in with this group of...well you decide who we are and what we stand for. Presented below is a sampling of writing from our little corner of the blogosphere.











At present we have 17 member Blogs. That number will grow.

---

Our fearless leader, the Ghost of a Flea chimes in with a warning about Danes on our borders. He also talks about Paris and Nicole and Daleks and Swagger sticks. The Flea is averaging about 10 posts per day: I thought that I had detected some nefarious pattern in these entries noted, but it's more likely that I'm totally insane.

---

Ith from Absinthe & Cookies presents lots of bite-sized morsels. However, my favourite is this one. "The senior staff believes the media is committed to seeing us win this thing, and that the convention inoculated us from these kinds of stories." GRRRR! What media bias?

---

Paul Jané of All Agitprop, All the Time talks about a group of loveable mercenaries getting pardoned by the U.S. Military for crimes they didn't commit. I'm told the 80's are coming back in a big way...

---

John of Castle Argghhh! goes wading through the past on ebay and scores a piece of history from August 1917. He also notes that Canadians are still fulfilling vital roles in the war on terror in Afghanistan. Too many people seem to have forgotten.

---

Jon at Blogulaciousness has two posts regarding Michelle Malkin's new book In Defense of Internment. I think I want to read this book too, if only to be well armed the next time I hear an argument break out over it at the local bookstore.

---

Alan at Gen X at 40 notes our Federal Government's collective "up yours" to our veterans may not turn out as they expected.

---

Both Huck of Bumfonline and Jaeger of Trudeaupia are commenting on the growing displeasure with the CRTC's decision to shut down CHOI-FM. My favourite sign has to be: Clowns Rule This Country...

---

Paul, at Musings of a Canadian Slacker lives up to his blog title by not having a new entry, but commemorates the 60th anniversary of the July 20th von Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler. How many lives on both sides would have been saved if they had succeeded?

---

Myrick comments on a study showing how Al-Qaeda ideology is affecting second and third-generation South Asian men, who otherwise would seem to be perfectly integrated into British society. Something our thought-police at the CRTC should take into account since Al-Jazeera may soon be available in Canada.

---

Lot's of goodies at Occam's Carbuncle ranging from some classic Bill Clinton, fun with notwithstanding clauses, and taking the guy who likes to blow up people who like to blow us up

---

Paul at Ravishing Light also notes the protest against the CRTC at Parliament Hill and also covers The Horror! The Horror! how John Kerry thinks Apocalypse Now was actually his biography. "Reporting for Duty!"

---

Chris Taylor has two excellent articles up about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and the special challenges faced by the men who effectively ended World War Two.

He also points out the similarity with other societies "that encourage their young into war and martyrdom as the purest of accomplishments."

---

The Last Amazon notes that Monday was the 30th anniversary of the death of nine Canadian peacekeepers at the hands of Syria. No apologies. No compensation. Nothing. I didn't even know about this.

---

The Monger's got lots of good stuff to peruse, however my favourite is about how quick everyone is to judge Iraq's fledgling democracy. Remember our own democracies took a lot of time and a lot of blood to develop.

---

The Tiger in Winter discusses Treason as it relates to the rule of law in a thought-provoking post on the subject.

---

Well it's been fun ladies and gentlemen...I do hereby hand responsibility for the next issue of the Red Ensign Standard over to The Last Amazon for August 26th.

Red Ensign

It's coming.

The RED ENSIGN REVIEW.

This Thursday I will be your host. Until then, read the post that started it all.

Do not adjust your set...

That was fun. There were some fun blow-ups on my blogging software today and yesterday. Thankfully I only lost one post, making references to John Kerry's resemblance to Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer

In the Flesh

One thing that was unique about our cross-country move was that I got to meet Paul at Light and Dark in the beautiful mountain town of Canmore. Since I took up this (hobby? contact sport? obsession?) known as blogging, I had yet to meet one blogger, apart from my beloved wife, who took up the (blood sport? vendetta hit? word massacre?) hobby at about the same time I did...

It was weird and cool to meet someone else who could speak the blogging lingo and who knew all the same reference points in the blogosphere that I did.

Glad to have met you, Paul!