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CBC.”
    â€œAnd that’s all bullshit.”
    â€œAre you telling me that we haven’t had three thousand bombs dropped in Canada since the annexation?”
    â€œAnnexation! Annexation, fuckin’ invasion. CBC may as well be NBC for all the shit they put out.” Her anger pulled at her face, lengthened it.
    Ben shrugged.
    Monica leaned back, “I know, I know, they put out what they can. But, it pisses me off that the people don’t hear what’s really going on.”
    â€œIs the bomb count wrong?” Ben’s question wasn’t rhetorical.
    â€œWho knows, probably. Does the bomb count include cluster bombs? Does it include Bolts from Heaven? They’ve dropped at least a dozen. Tore the shit out of the boys in Lac La Biche. What gets me the most is that garbage about balanced reporting; I mean what was that righteousness stuff about? The Christian right isn’t balanced, hasn’t been since Bush. And we all know that isn’t what it’s all about. It’s about Fort Mac, it’s about oil. They invaded us because Prime Minister Thoreau threatened to cut off all trade with the Americans. San Francisco was just an excuse. Everyone knows that it’s about oil. Terrorists from Canada, immorality and drugs and atheism and all that other crap are just excuses, and the world allows it.”
    â€œI’m not defending the invasion, annexation, but the bombing of San Francisco changed a lot of things.”
    â€œI’m not convinced that bomb came through Canada. I think they don’t have a clue how it got there, and used it as an excuse. I wouldn’t doubt they did it themselves. Think about it. The Christians didn’t like what was happening in Frisco; they called it sin city and hated it as much as Islam did.”
    â€œThat’s too far for me. Nobody sacrifices that much.”
    Monica sat back “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She used a stray strand of dark brown hair across her forehead as an opportunity to run her hand over her head, to soothe her thoughts. “Frisco changed things. But, how did anyone get a dirty bomb across the border. Ever since 9/11 there have been radiation detectors at every border crossing. I’m just not convinced that those eight were the ones that did it. And now we’ll never know. Nobody can re-examine them.”
    â€œQuick trials and quick executions have a way of putting an end to questions.”
    â€œJames Henderson was talking at the university awhile ago and he said we were back in the last century, that all of the gains in human rights have been erased. His argument was that we have to start all over again and redevelop a body of law stronger than the old UN Charter or our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a body of law developed without interference by special interest. You should’ve been there Ben. The entire theatre sat there with their mouths open. I was wishing someone like you were there to push his buttons; get him to see the other side, to see the people in the equation.”
    â€œJames is doing what James knows. It took courage for him to stand up.”
    â€œHe wasn’t standing up against the Americans. Never once said directly that the bastards needed to be put back into their place. His argument was that law needed to be redeveloped. He was quite conciliatory.”
    â€œAs he should be. Calling people bastards doesn’t do much.”
    â€œHave you read Warren Churchill’s piece about American Bastardism?”
    â€œNo, What’s he saying now?” Ben stacked Monica’s plate on top of his, gathered the knives and forks and carried them to the sink.
    â€œOh, it was a wonderful piece about how the Americans are truly bastards in the literal sense. The world does not recognize the marriage of their parents, that the left was not free to marry the right, the Democrat–Republican marriage was never consecrated, thus American