Would you give up your underwear for peace?  Canadian women are being asked to volunteer their undergarments in an international effort to shame Myanmar’s ruling junta into giving citizens greater access to humanitarian aid and human rights. Organizers launched the Canadian edition of the Panties for Peace! campaign Tuesday with a call for women to send their underwear to the Myanmar embassy in Ottawa.

The campaign plays off regional superstitions that contact with women’s panties can sap a man’s power. Activists claim the fear is shared by the leaders of the country’s military regime. Spearheaded by a pro-democracy group based in Thailand, the campaign was launched in the fall to draw attention to human rights abuses against women in the country.  At the time, the junta was violently suppressing a pro-democracy uprising by the country’s Buddhist monks.  

The Canadian version of the international campaign, co-ordinated by the Quebec Women’s Federation and Rights and Democracy, hopes to also raise funds for victims of Cyclone Nargis.  More than 130,000 people are thought to be dead or missing in the wake of the cyclone that struck in early May. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million survivors have not yet received any aid.

News organizations reported Tuesday that humanitarian workers have only just begun reaching the remote, hardest hit areas of the country.  Levesque said Rights and Democracy will funnel any money raised to known aid groups working along the Myanmar-Thai border. She refused to name the groups for security reasons.

Observer say the junta is worried successful aid operations will undermine its authority following the protests in the fall. According to the campaign’s organizers, Myanmar’s embassies in Europe, Australia and Brazil, among other places, have been receiving female underpants in the mail.  Personally I think they should only collect nasty soiled underwear and drop them on the military headquarters.

Tired of squeezing into cattle class and looking for somewhere to stretch out? Pay just 12 dollars more to sleep in the overhead luggage compartments of Canada’s Westjet … on April Fool’s Day.
 
“The overhead compartment has traditionally been a place where guests have placed their carry-on baggage,” Westjet vice president Bob Cummings said in a joke statement.

“Given that the overhead bins on our fleet are among the most spacious of any airline, we made the decision to offer sleeper cabins in that space,” he said of their fleet of 73 Boeing 737s.

“By offering our existing overhead bins as sleeper cabins, guests will now have the opportunity to lie down for a period of time and arrive at their destination refreshed, rested and ready to go.”

The statement was accompanied with a picture of a traveler comfortably nestled in an overhead bin bed with a pillow and a blanket.  I have seen hotel rooms in Asia that looks similar to those overheads, so I guess a lots of folks fell for this one.

In some parts of the U.S. the word “Canadian” has ugly connotations and it is not because we refused to join the war in Iraq.  In the south, “Canadian” is a racial slur referring to African-Americans. The term has its roots in the word Canuck, says an expert.

“Canuck, that very same term of endearment Canadians use now,” was used by racist southern Americans to insult French Canadians with dark skins, said Stefan Dollinger, editor in chief of Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Over time, we gave the word Canuck a totally different spin and it now refers to any Canadian, he said.

“In the U.S. some people still use Canuck as a slur,” said Dollinger, who is also the director of the University of British Columbia’s Canadian English lab.

Internet message-board posters have been discussing the issue of southern Americans using the word Canadian to replace racial epithets for black people.

A Texas district attorney got into trouble and have left others wondering what exactly it means when he used the word “Canadians” to describe blacks on a jury.

In an e-mail to a junior prosecutor, district attorney Mike Trent wrote: “He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that has some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”

Reports indicated there were no Canadians, but a number of black people.

“Never heard of that here in Edmonton,” said Michael Broodhagen, local chapter president of the National Black Coalition of Canada Society.   There goes the US being dumb again, it must be an effect of George W. Bush.

Wearing speedos at the beach is wrong, right?  But they crazy Canadians are showing off their speedos in sub-zero weather…that is wrong, very wrong!!  But it was all for a Sick Kids Foundation fundraiser, so that is ok, eh?

Those crazy, nutty Canadians sure have good hearts, check these guys out, they have no shame!