Friday, November 26, 2010

Thank you Mr. Galloway. You are Indeed an Inspiration

For all of their attempts to silence this British member of Parliament, George Galloway has been able to speak in the country formerly known as Canada, and as he says "the sky over Canada hasn't fallen in".

He is a brilliant and caring man and his message is revealing. Or at least it should be.

We are in trouble. The rest of the world knows it. Canadians do not.

The theme of my tour, and the question I still can't answer, is why Canada ended up with a government so determined on isolation from the currents abroad? By Stephen Harper's own admission, you are paying a pretty penny. Although he is ready to "pay any price" for this isolation, I'm not sure you are.

Canada's defeat in the recent election to the UN Security Council was due to the country's "unstinting support" for Israel, as he admits. He's picked a fight with Russia, prompting a former Canadian diplomat to describe his government as the "last Cold Warrior standing." There's the rumpus with the United Arab Emirates over something as inconsequential as landing spaces. Rumbling towards
us is a major crisis in Lebanon with Canada's fingerprints all over the casus belli. The head of the inquiry into the assassination of Rafik Hariri and most of the "investigation" muscle is Canadian.

Canada gained much credit, particularly in the Muslim world, for sitting out the Iraq war. But Harper is no Jean Chretien and the goodwill account is now overdrawn. A couple of broken promises later your young men and women, who have already paid a disproportionately high price among NATO occupation countries, are being sent back into the maw of Hamid Karzai's corrupt, incompetent, failing Kabul congestion charge area caliphate, this time as "trainers."

Please tell me that we are going to wake up soon.

6 comments:

  1. It's amazing that someone in Britain should see what Canadians cannot. More and more I am beginning to see how the people of Germany could have been hypnotized by Hitler. Just the other day my own husband said about Harper, "Well, I know he's a dictator, so what?" I am appalled, both by my husband and by the Harpies. My husband is a reasonably intelligent retired teacher who has never voted Conservative in his life, but he shrugs his shoulders as if a having a dictator in Ottawa is none of his business.
    Bravo for Mr. Galloway, he sees extension of the war in Afghanistan for what it is. My husband says, "Oh, yes, but they're just going to be there for three years as trainers" as if that's a good thing.
    How did this happen? Why are responsible, respectable Canadians acting like zombies? And one of them right here in my house! I send him links to your column, but he just dismisses opposition to the dictator as unnecessary feminine hysteria.
    I shake my head in wonder. How did he get so subtly hypnotized that he doesn't even realize, or care, that it happened? And there are millions more Canadians just like him, shrugging their shoulders and saying "So what?" as if Harper were the same as any other Prime Minister!
    What about the young people in the military? Do they believe this "trainer" nonsense? Are they going over there thinking they're doing something good? Why are none of them protesting? Their very lives are at stake! Why aren't their families protesting?

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  2. In Germany right after the war, a journalist asked a woman on the street how the German people could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. She shrugged and said "Ah. It's Germany".

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  3. I have to admit that there's a certain lack of belief for me that things have changed so markedly in Canada. It does make me wonder about other places in the world. I think that when people think about dictatorship or failed states, they think that those people are somehow different from ourselves. Increasingly I'm seeing that they were probably just busy and couldn't bother being involved in politics because they think it's irrelevant. I am sorry to say that I think they are too lazy to think about their commitment to their community or country. Today people put more energy into the design of their homes than their communities but we are paying a huge price for this shirking of civic obligation.

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  4. People have a head in the sand habit of not waking up until the wolf is at their own door. Next meal, next paycheck, next ballgame, hand to mouth perspective on life's priorities. If we could sit everyone down in front of CBC's mini series on Love, Hate and Propaganda, with a daily added dose from Emily's blog, maybe , just maybe . . .

    The power of one.

    Go Emily !

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