Sunday, October 26, 2008

Finally some time...

Sunday, October 26, 2008
So I just got back from my cadet weekend exercize... well I got back like at 1230 but i fell asleep.


We did lots this weekend, it was really fun. Saturday during the day we did repelling off the new tower on base as well as I taught classes on concealment and camo application. That was to get ready for saturday night.

Kelowna core was also on base and they were doing map and compass training all day. That night they were doing a compass course. Out task was to "stalk" them. They had no idea we were going out so it proved to be very funny when we told them we had been watching them all night! We were pretty good at hiding and moving undetected. None of our teams were caught by the kelowna team, but we got caught once each by on of our officers, whom we were also running from.

My team scared one of the officers near the end. 2 team members had gone ahead to scout out an area while the rest of us hid near a fence beside the tunnel. We waited there and lots of people passed us without even seeing us. One group, well half of one, was lost and waiting near us. an officer was helping them look for there team mates, so when our scouts came out of the tunnel and they got caught like 2 feet away from us hiding, the officer asked where the rest of there them was. The said they had no idea and thats when I sat up and said "We're right here mam!". I swear she jumped like 2 feet in the air. It was so funny.

During the night I hurt my knee quite bad. I was running and my knee locked when i hit a hole in the ground. It still really hurts and its really stiff. I've been icing it on and off and its getting better but still hurts....

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Busy, Busy...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
I have been pretty busy lately, infact I'm leaving for school here in a few minutes for a History Tutorial.

Band Clinic was this past weekend, and I got my level 4. It's great considering I only have like 4 hours to prepare. I will go for my level 5 this summer.

This term is almost finished... finals are on Nov. 7th.


Kelly was there this weekend and recomended me to a snare instructor for the cadet band. She thinks she will be able to but not positive yet. I really hope so, im going nuts finding people to teach.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

B-Day Prezzies

Thursday, October 16, 2008


I got this iPod from my family last friday. It's a new nano chromatic video iPod - and it's wicked cool.
It took me a while to figure out how to convert my video's but it's all good now. I love all the new features!




I just got a package from Lindsay today - and this is what she got me!
A Sailor Moon drawstring Back-bag,
Hello Kitty stationary,
Hello kitty mini stuffie!
I love it all!






I got this necklace from Casy at cadets on tuesday. I love it, its so beautiful!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Happy Birthday to Me...

Monday, October 13, 2008
Yuppers - I'm 17!


Boring day today though - it's thanksgiving in Canada which means all my friends either have family over, or are out of town. Which makes for pretty lame celebrations...

Oh well - I just should be greatful that my birthday isn't on Christmas - that would suck even more.


My family didn't do much for thanksgiving - we never even made our own turkey. My mom just bought KFC... lmao

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Death & DofE

Saturday, October 4, 2008
Whats it with death this fall?

First my Uncle died - now my good friend Shaun's dad has died.


Shaun is a close friend from cadets - his mom is an officer too. His dad has been really sick for about a year now - and he passed away last weekend, though I just found out about it on tuesday at cadets. Our core is all going to the funeral - or at least most of us - to support Shaun and his family.

Poor guy is taking it really hard too - he refuses to let it out and is keeping it all in... so i'm a little worried about him...




In happier news - my team DID win the Stalin trail, and I passed a test on Facist Italy only getting 6 questions wrong out of 35 - so not bad at all!
And in Psychology our serveys are going pretty well - though I got kicked out of Walmart yesterday! haha~

Last night Casy was working night shift at the Super 8 (right next door to my house, my mom also works there) so I went to visit her at 2am! I ended up staying untill nearly 430, but it was lots of fun. We even researched info about campsites for the Duke of Edinburgh's award we are going for together.

What is Duke of Edinburgh? Well...
"The DofE (or The Duke of Edinburgh's Award), is a programme of activities that can be undertaken by anyone aged from 14 to 25, regardless of personal ability. Activities include Community Service, Physical, Skills, and Expedition; with one more, Residential Skills, added for the Gold Award."


We're doing Silver, here's what we have to do:
"A Silver DofE programme has 4 sections, Volunteering, Physical, Skills and Expedition. You need to do at least 6 months Volunteering and a minimum of 6 months on either Physical or Skills and 3 months on the other. It’s up to you which one you do for longer.
The Expedition section involves planning, training for and doing a 3 day (2 night) expedition."

It's open to anyone in British Commonwealth between aged of 14-24 so if you interested here is some links:
Wiki Page
Home page

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Stalin's Lawyer

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Life's been pretty boring - school and cadets mostly, as usual.

But school's been pretty sweet~

In Psychology we are creating a servey and a plan to help change the people of vernon from using lots of plastic bags when shopping - to largely using reuseable bags. We're studing different psychological marketing strategies and how and why they work. Really cool because we get to spend the next 3 afternoons at various stores around vernon handing out serveys and info cards.


History has been the best though - very interesting! Our latest project is a Role Play Trial of Joseph Stalin - my group is on the defending side. We thought it would be very hard at first, going against him "killing 30 million" ect. but we have found loads of sweet info. Here is our argument:
(The opposing team is using the Ukrain famine against us as well as "poor living conditions" the first two argue against their attacks)

1. The Famine in the Ukrain was simply the cause of the Great depression - western countries were not affected as drasticaly because they were more industralized. Stalin was trying desperatly to make all of the USSR strong - but obviously not fast enough for the Ukrain. The paper you use against us was written in Edmonton in 1983; western information is often exadurated. For example; the real number executed by Stalin was only between 6-10 million, - not the accused 30+ -and a great majority was not directly ordered by Stalin - many were caused by neighbors telling lies about others because of past quarels.

In fact - there is no possible way that Stalin could have killed anymore than 10 Million if you take into acount the total deaths in that area and the life expectancy, ect. What I mean is, if Stalin had even killed as much as 15 Million - according to data of the total deaths in Russia during that time - that would mean only 1 in every 1000 would die of natural causes every 4 years, which was simply impossible in those times concidering the low life expectancy just shortly before Stalin's Rule. According to Statistics - Stalin acctually improved the life expectany by over double during his rein!

2. Stalin greatly improved life of the people of Russia in many ways. His 5 year plans may not have been fully achieved but they did increase a majority of the industries by drastic numbers - esspecialy Steel and Oil. Russia was the ONLY county not affected drastically by the Great Depression - with the exception of states closer to western Europe. Stalin is still seen as a great leader in Russia because of the improvments he created. Illiteracy nearly disapeared, and women had much more rights than they would in the West. Health Care was given to everyone who needed it, no matter their status.

He did do some terrible things - but none fully under his control....

(These later points are our argument)

3. Stalin had a troubled childhood. As a witness we bring in Stalin's mother. We ask her about Stalin as a child; he says he was a "poor innocent boy, who always wanted to please his father. A Smart boy who loved books." We procede to ask her about stalins father: "He was a terrible drunk - and got mad very easy. He would often take his anger out on little stalin, and me when I got in the way. After His father died, stalin became very quiet, he never really made many friends and got into lots of fights. I sent him to a religious school - oh how i wanted him to become a priest! - but he was soon kicked out because of his behavior - oh my poor boy!"
Then she leaves.

4. Stalin loved books indeed, and many influenced him during his mentaly unstable childhood - such as a Manuscript of Dawrins, leading him to abandon religion completely; and another book, a Robin Hood like tale of a man named Koba who saved a girl from a village from a "tyrannic village governor". This story influenced Stalin so much, enought to make his favorite nickname "Koba", it could be said that many of his actions take root here; the woman representing the workers and the govenor representing the Tsar or the government - in Stalins eyes.


We now bring in a guard as a witness to tell a true story about stalin when he was in prison before he came into power.
"He would act out lots - He didn't care, nor was he affected by the beatings he recieved. Once, he was orderd to kneel to be flogged and he did so, but he was reading a book - of which was banned by the government - we ordered him to put it down but he refused. So we beat him, harder than we planned because of his disobediance - and it pained me to see him - he just took all the beatings, never once cried out. We asked him again to put the book down or the beatings would become worse - still he refused! We eventually tore the book from his hands and beat him till we ourselves grew tired. Stalin then picked his book back up and continued to read.


We now see the effects the beating and the books had on Stalin. It is clear that he was mentaly unstable - esspecially if one were to take advantage of his unstability.

5. In fact, many DID take advantage of Stalin - persuading him to do things through is unstable state.

A Huge example is Stalins "Cult of Personality" - most people believe that this was Stalins doing and what he wanted but infact it was forced and built up around him by revisionists. The fact of the existence of a revisionist majority in the leadership of the Communist Party was effectively concealed by the ‘cult of personality’ that was built up around Stalin. Stalin himself criticised and ridiculed this ‘cult’ on numerous occasions. Yet it continued! It follows that Stalin was either an utter hypocrite - or he was unable to put a stop to this ‘cult’. The initiator of the ‘cult of personality’ around Stalin was, in fact, Karl Radek. Stalin himself is on record as telling the German author Lion Feuchtwanger in 1936 that the ‘cult of his personality’ was being built up by his political opponents. So clearly his "Horrible Suspisions that made him kill innocent politions" was not so horrible after all?


This returns us to the accusations of Stalin Killing Millions - that too was persuaded upon him. Nikita Khrushchev said in his 1956 secret speech (and I quote):
“The question is complicated here by the fact that all this was done because Stalin was convinced that this was necessary for the defence of the interest of the working class against the plotting of ememies. He saw this from the position of the interests of the working class, of the interest of the victory of socialism.”

But only a person who was mentaly unstable could possibly be convinced that the arrest of innocent people could serve socialism.


In the 1960s, anti-Soviet propaganda originally published in Nazi Germany, was republished by a former British secret service agent named Robert Conquest under the more respectable cloak of Harvard University. In the 1980s, Conquest was alleging that there had been in 1939 a total of 25 to 30 million prisoners in the Soviet Union, that in 1950 there had been 12 million political prisoners.
But when, under Gorbachev, the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU were opened up to researchers, it was found that the number of political prisoners in 1939 had been 454,000, not the millions claimed by Conquest. Once again we see that western society has exadurated real facts in order to make stalin look bad - to make communism look bad.





An then we carry on for a little bit longer just doing a conclusion ~
You think we will win? lol I Hope so!