The Canadian Empire

Tags

army, Canada, defense, trudeal

     

Let’s say I have a thousand dollars to spend on my house and my large property. The house is in bad need of repairs. I have relatives living in a cottage on the grounds that is in even worse shape: they have no running water there too. An uncle of mine is living on the streets, homeless. But what I decide to do with my thousand dollars is buy some guns and install a security system for my property. Does this make sense? Well, this is what Trudeau le Petit, PM of Canada has decided to do with his thousand dollars – sorry, your trillion dollars.

 

All those cosy little dinners with Obama must have given him delusions of grandeur. First Christia Freeland, the Foreign Affairs Minister, says Canada should step up to the plate, the plate evidently vacated by America, and then we hear, the following day, that we shall increase our defense spending by 70 percent. Not on my tax dollars, brother! Who exactly are we defending ourselves against with this massive increase? Ah, we find, a few days later, with effusive CBC coverage, it must be the Russians. For a detachment of Canadian troops is now settling comfortably in to protect the Latvians from the Bear. Many Latvians say this protection is unnecessary – the Bear is friendly. And, one is forced to think, how much protection will 600 Canadians afford against the Russian military?

 

This country ought to set a real example and adopt a pacifist constitution – save the trillion dollars for what is needed here – yet it won’t. You wonder if there are dreams of empire in the PM’s office – a sunny little empire not at all despotic. If wisdom reigned, these little corners of erstwhile empire would be left to sort out their own problems in their own time. We weren’t dragged into modernity by the scruff the neck, and nor should they be. But until we wake up to our interference in their worlds, they will be.

 

Paul William Roberts

The Terror Comes to Quebec

Tags

Canada, Islam, justin trudeau, kevin o'leary, Quebec, quebec city, racism, shooting, terrorism

 

The response of Canada in general and Quebec in particular to the murder of five men and the wounding of many more in a Quebec City mosque has been deeply gratifying, and it defines the difference between this country and the United States. The violence of a self-professed white supremecitst neo-Nazi, along with his guns, is clearly very alien here – and so it should be – shocking the entire nation merely by its appearance, which is a quotidian affair down south. For the first time, Prime Minister Trudeau Le Petit proved he is not the invertebrate he has seemed to be over the past year, delivering a number of impassioned speeches – remarkably free of his usual neurotic gasps and ahs – that hit precisely the right note of unification within diversity, of a common identity despite trivial differences, of neighbourliness, mutual assistance in troubled times, and a common understanding that overrides all the hateful actions of a miniscule minority. This may well be Trudeau’s Winston-Churchill-Moment, his Finest Hour, his Blitz. Despite snide comments from the useless Opposition Party leaders, he has continued to walk the fine line between Canada’s vital trade with the US and the need to uphold and protect our values as an open and welcoming nation for refugees and immigrants, no matter where they come from or what faith they profess. Given the recent and interminable provocations from the White House, this is no easy thing for someone of such avowedly liberal inclinations. As leader of the not-always-so-liberal Liberal Party, it is a balancing-act requiring enormously deft skill. If Trudeau emerges unbloodied from his soon-to-be meeting with the new American President, and if our trading relationship is still intact — $ 2 billion crosses that border daily – then his stature will be increased manifold, the once-concealed titanium backbone visible for all to see. After the gamboling and shilly-shallying of this past year, it is remarkable to find that Le Petit has a much deeper and stronger core in him, and can at times seem to understand truly what he talks about – or maybe it is just a matter of truly caring about that of which he talks?

 

It is fortunate that the Quebec City shooter proved to be a lone wolf. Early reports had stated that there were two assailants, one with a Muslim name – a claim that Fox News was still posting three days later, 72 hours after it had been disavowed by the police here. More kudos to Trudeau for a letter from his office accusing Fox of “playing identity politics” and demanding that the post come down — which it duly did, complete with a rare apology. Trudeau termed the mosque murders “a terrorist attack”, which was true enough, but it may have made the more feeble-minded media fixate upon the usual terrorist act, which to them is so-called Islamist agents mowing down us infidels wherever we gather. It is more complicated than this, of course, but terrorism is also US drone attacks that “inadvertently” slaughter hundreds of innocent civilians. It is the invasion of sovereign states too, and the CIA financing or fomenting of rebellions against democratically-elected governments all over the globe. Since September 11^th 2001, there have been less than 50 citizens killed in the US by identifiable terrorists working on behalf of an “Islamist” organization – and those few killers were all US-born American citizens, who only imagined they were Muslims. Worldwide, the death-toll of innocents as a direct result of US covert operations is unknown – the Pentagon openly states that “we don’t do body-counts” – but it is believed to number, over the past decade, in the high six figures. So the balance of terror is well in Washington’s favour, or to its shame – and this is what principally motivates those we view, rightly or wrongly, as the Enemy. What happened in Quebec City does not therefore easily compute in the minds of all too many journalists, who are now focussing like hungry vultures on all the grief and heartbreak, as well as, with immense satisfaction, on all the national peace and love, all the weeping vigils, the flowers and gift-baskets. The term “lone wolf” equals “homicidal psychopath” – nearly impossible to predict or prevent – which means his motives are not worth seeking out, because insanity is its own impermeable motivation.

 

I cannot help thinking, however, how different the reactions of Canadians would be had the victims in Quebec been us, the white majority, and the murderers self-alleged Muslims. People forget that western Islamic communities are also much in need of support, comfort and sheer neighbourliness after such events as the Paris attacks or the Brussels bombings, when they feel most unsafe and fearful. What they most fear and feel unsafe about is what just happened in a Quebec mosque. It is good that we are finally hearing this from the lips of Canadian Muslims, many of whom now tell of more minor hate-crimes they’ve experienced, or the random hostility of strangers that makes wives, daughters and mothers afraid to walk the streets in daylight. But we must remember all of this when next we hear of Islamist terror attacks.

 

 

The Islam of 99.999 percent of Muslims is a religion of peace, compassion and fraternity — period. And Muslims are, after all is said and done, only 0.3 of Canada’s population. If we took in a million more refugees – which we could do and should do – they would only amount to 0.6 of the population. Nothing.

 

 

Just as the Torah, Tanakh and the Gospels contain passages of an horrendously bloodthirty or hateful nature, so, unfortunately, does the Holy Koran. But these texts were all written by and for a nomadic and clannishly warlike peoples many hundreds of years ago – yet all orthodox believers contend that they are the words of God, and thus cannot be edited or revised. The Kabbalists, just like the Sufis and Christian mystics, have found an interpretive way around this dilemma, and it is to be hoped that the mainstream of all three monotheisms will eventually follow suit. The Koran (which means “recited verses”) is, as its name suggests, meant to be chanted aloud, not read in silence. The classical Arabic in which it was written makes a good third of the text impossible to understand with any certainty, because, at its earliest stage, the written language more closely resembles a mnemonic device to aid those chanting the suras from memory – as the faithful are urged to do, because the words are, if often opaque in meaning, surpassingly beautiful to hear. This linguistic difficulty also means that all translations are necessarily interpretations, just as all interpretations are not necessarily accurate transmissions of meaning. Any devout Muslim scanning a terrorist website – many of which are funded by the fabulously wealthy and heretical Saudi Arabian Wahhabite sect – will instantly recognize quotations taken out of context, or drawn from writings other than the Koran and posted without any ascription. But the untutored youthful rebel looking for a cause will not know this. We must now remember that the radicalized Muslim kid is no different than Alexandre Bissonette, the 27-year-old Quebec neo-Nazi shooter – except you don’t really have to sift through or take out of context anything in the rantings of Adolf Hitler to find something suitably repulsive, hateful and violent for a causus belli.

 

The Province of Quebec, where I live, seems to be embarrassed or shamed by this horrible act, and she protesteth too much methinks. Such a strong showing of many thousandsturning out in support of the Muslim community, and many politicians, both provincial and federal – including the Prime Minister – joining them, belies the fact that Quebec has a darker and uglier side. You know this is true when the Premier denies it is true – not to mention the revelation that French radio shock-jocks in the province often broadcast racist rants. I don’t listen to French radio, but obviously someone does – and not a few someones, either, if advertising incomes are to be profitable enough to warrant keeping the shouters on air. Mordechai Richler recalled seeing hotel signs in the fifties reading No Jews or Dogs, and we still often hear of defiled mosques, synagogues, religious community centres, and of desecrated Jewish cemetaries. There are no Muslim cenetaries here – yet. The simple truth is that hate-crime stats in Quebec are far higher than those for the rest of this country. As Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the Jew exists only in the mind of the anti-semite – and it follows that the Muslim only exists in the mind of the Islamophobe. This glimpse of real Quebec Muslims that we are now getting, curtesy of their immense tragedy, ought to dispel the fantasy-images based on fear and ignorance. As Premier Cuillard wishfully stated, perhaps this is a turning-point in Quebec history. But, if it is merely hinged upon the nature of another terrorist attack, perhaps it is not.

 

French Canadiens imagine they have a long history of grievances against the English – whom they also imagine dominate federal government and are imposing multiculturalism on them – when in fact the British, after their 1759 consquest, could hardly have treated them more equitably. They kept their language, their legal system and the Catholic faith, when the norms of conquest dictated that English language and law should be imposed. No one in Britain at the time was allowed to practice Catholicism, so the Quebecois were in effect treated more liberally than British citizens. But a conquered people are never allowed to be content – it’s human nature. They complain endlessly, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness complained to Moses about everything. A largely imaginary grudge has now festered here for something short of 300 years, and it views anything deemed alien as an imposition by the despised English, who are believed to run everything with malign intentions – even though no government can be elected without the vast Quebecois vote. Despite the fact that Canada declares itself to be a multicultural country in the Charter of Rights, Quebec, which is even recognized by Ottawa as a “nation”, officially announces that it is proudly not multicultural. Everyone just shrugs: c’est les Francais. Many hardliners here, always seeking referenda to separate from Canada and be a litral sovereign nation, view such things as Indigeneous reservations and rights, as well as the current high immigration stats to be malignant impositions by the English-speaking majority, and designed to undermine or erode Quebecois values. Hardly anyone in the whole country denies their right to speak French, more or less, or pursue a unique and somewhat French-like culture, more or less. I for one find it an oasis of charm and politesse in the North American desert. But the Internet and social media are slowly eroding this from within, and young Quebecois are becoming increasingly bilingual, cognizant of their place in a still largely Anglo continent. This is bound to suffer blowback – and so it is. Just as the advent of Donald Trump is really all about a yearning for simpler, greater, whiter times, so the rise of Quebecois racism is really all about Francophile xenophobia and the pipe-dream of sovereignty – which is rapidly fading in the harsh light of a new day. But much of Quebec remains a backwater of startlingly primitive and ignorant communities, sheltered from North American realities by a media of stunningly narrow and parochial concerns. It is not unlike conditions in rural areas of the southern US states, fed on Fox Opinions and the intemperate tirades of Trump, along with the mad barrage of right-wing radio and fundamentalist Christian televangelists. Education is of course the only answer to this woeful condition, and education in Quebec – as it is in much of the US – has deteriorated into a muddle of confusion and nonsense, depriving first to sixth-graders of the bilingualism they most need and which could be most easily taught as conversation to kids of that age. Not a few here believe that this failure in the school system is designed to prevent the Quebecois from exploring the Big World, and thus retaining their Anglophobia, which will enslave them to atavistic sovereignist values and concerns. It will not and cannot work, for human beings are inevitably drawn to a critical mass – and what happened in that mosque does seem to be forming a new mass-opinion of some considerable size.

 

It is also trashing the vain hopes of Canada’s Francophobic wannabe Trump, Kevin O’Leary – who actually seems to live mostly in America. True to the idiotically insensitive form of his role-model, Kev – wealthy entrepreneur of dubious ethics, and abusive reality-TV co-host – posted online a video of himself laughing maniacally as he fired off a machine-gun in a Florida shooting range. You might say this was somewhat lacking in empathy after the Quebec slaughter – and many did say it. So many indeed that one of his lackies apologetically took down the offending video. But Kev had to lie, saying he took it down “out of respect” for the slain. Well, it was what Trump would have done, wasn’t it? What Trump wouldn’t have done, however, is run for the leadership of a party three years away from any general election. Perhaps Kev miscalculated this? In the unlikely event that he wins, he will have to spend over two years as Opposition Leader in the terminally boring House of Parliament – and show up nearly every day for even more terminally boring and stultifyingly trivial or petty debates. The media will be watching. He can’t return to his Big American Life, can he? Worse still, he can’t be sure of winning the 2019 eklection either – especially if sunny-boy Le Petit retains his backbone. Worse than that is the gambit of modelling himself after Trump, and thus being tied to the Trump fortunes – which even the most flamboyant bookmakers are currently not giving good odds on. The Puritanical dinosaur, Mike Pence, is by far the favourite in this race to avoid a  common doom. No, Kev has not thought this through at all. At what point will he say it’s all rigged? In fact it is rigged in my opinion – rigged to end in preposterous confusion whatever happens. Like the US system, ours is broken beyond repair. It’s an 18^th-century relic that belongs in a museum of governance. But you cannot replace it by running as a candidate who will dismantle government, can you? The only question worth asking is: can it be done peacefully, and then what will replace it? I suggest a look at the Vedic texts on this subject, and a study of the Torah’s social laws. Wise men always knew how best to organize and govern any society. It has been unwise men who’ve fouled the nest.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

 

RIP John Berger & Ottawoes

Tags

art, Canada, john berger, Ottawa, politics

RIP John Berger

 

Last week the esteemed writer and Marxist art critic, John Berger, died at the ripe old age of 95. Best known for his seminal book Ways of Seeing, and the four-part television series based on it (currently available free on U-Tube), Berger began his career as a painter, but abandoned this for writing, because “painting seemed to be irrelevant in a world so chaotic and conflicted”. Irrelevant or not, he certainly devoted much time to thinking about it once he had ceased to practice. Notable among his acute perceptions was the fact that photography has transformed the way art is viewed. Renaissance masterpieces were generally spiritual or religious in nature, designed to be viewed in a single location – most often a church of some sort – where they were installed as a central part of the overall structure. Icons were even believed to possess a numinousity of their own which merited extreme veneration. But now these images can be viewed in our homes, with our wallpaper, carpets and furniture as their background. They can also appear in books, as postcards, beer-mats, posters, and be imprinted on T-shirts or any other fabric. All of this radically alters the meaning and nature of the image itself. In referring to the National Gallery in London’s Virgin of the Rocks, by Leonardo Da Vinci, he observed that, in the gallery’s catalogue, the description of this painting ran to fourteen pages of dense scholarship about provenance and previous owners. None of this, he said, really concerns the picture. It is there to affirm the work’s authenticity – and mainly to disavow the authenticity of the same painting hanging in the Louvre, where the French insist that it is the English not they who have the copy. So art becomes about its value, about money rather than beauty or genius. The very hefty gilded frames that adorn these masterpieces suggest no less than this. Berger must have marvelled at recent auction sales, where both Lucien Freud and the still-living Peter Doig had works sell for close to 30 million. He noted that information also changes our perception, citing the familiar example of the cornfield with crows painted by Van Gogh an hour before he shot himself. Then he turned to Franz Hals vast portrait of the almoners’ directorate, observing that our view of these stark and sombre, white-frilled faces is dramatically changed by knowing that, before he embarked on the painting, the alms house had given grindingly poor old Hals three loads of peat to prevent him freezing to death over the winter. Berger wryly pointed out that the music played over images in art documentaries like his can transform our understanding of the work in often unhelpful or erroneous ways. Paintings, he said, are meant to be viewed in silence. He also criticized the zooming and panning in films, which distorts our comprehension of something made to be seen as a whole. Asking a group of school children to comment on Caravaggio’s portrait of Jesus with two argumentative men, he found that the girls all thought the figure of Christ was female, and the boys thought it was male – but, without being aware of the painter’s homosexuality, every kid recognized a gender ambiguity.

Ahead of his time in the very early seventies, Berger espoused a feminist view of the nude in art, assembling a panel of prominent women in his series to discuss their impressions of how the female form was presented in classical paintings. He himself saw the women in many, if not most of these major works as pliant, hairless and sexless, but always receptive to the male advance, noting adroitly that nudity here is a form of dress that is undressed. Sometimes even the flimsy garments are as revealing as a naked figure, falling suggestively in places, or clinging to prominent features. Berger was always quick to say that we ought not to take his word for anything – we ought to look and see for ourselves. And, as King David said, we have eyes but we do not see. As a way of seeing, Berger’s work is invaluable, and his was a life well lived – God speed, Johnny.

 

Ottawoes

 

Politicians have always been excruciatingly shallow and terminally hypocritical, but they usually conceal these traits better than is currently being done. Had Trump lost the election – which, according to the popular vote, he actually did – his name would by now be a byword for ridiculous failure. As it is, though, we have two candidates for leadership of Canada’s Conservative Party openly boasting that they are Trump-style politicos. The aptly-named Kelly Leach brays about her proposed draconian policies towards Muslim immigrants – policies which in fact would violate our Charter of Rights. The oafish loud-mouth Kevin O’Leary tells us how rich he is, and abuses contestants on his – yes! – reality-TV show. You can’t blame the multi-millionaire businessman for seeing a slight resemblance between himself and the Donald. But neither of these opportunistic reptiles seems to understand that there is a difference between Canada and the USA – the main difference being that they don’t have a hope in hell of getting elected leader. The prospect of them, however, makes me realize why I voted for Trudeau le Petit. Better sunny ways than bilious hubris.

 

Paul William Roberts       

Patriotism

Tags

Canada, patriotism, politics, trump, United States of America, war

What is it? Well, some – including Bob Dylan and Sam Shepherd – say, “It’s the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.” I am bound to concur. It’s at the core of currently-floundering Trump’s message (believe me, he won’t go down so easily), just as it was rooted in the barking of Adolf Hitler, whose principal appeal was one of national and ‘racial’ solidarity. The Fuhrer’s ranting demands for lebensraum merely consisted of a call to expand the Fatherland and reintegrate bits that had been carved off by history – German-speaking bits, on the whole. So the hollering for nationalist fervour – which is patriotism, after all is said and done – seems not to be a good thing? If the Nazis are too extreme and polarizing an example, take Napoleon. His vision for a United States of Europe – an idea currently crumbling into dust – was in reality one of an engorged France controlling many servile satellites. Paris was to be the capital of this ‘union’, which was the French Empire under another name. From Frederick the Great all the way back to the Romans, patriotism meant the expansion of a local ideology to incorporate thinking in the most far-flung regions. Rome extended to Persia. Great Britain included China, and still, psychologically, includes Australia and some Pacific islands. But patrimonies, homelands, now seem to feel threatened, insecure. Hence the appeal of patriotic hectoring in various forms.

Is this, one asks, why the Angus Reid organization last week conducted a poll to gauge the level of emotional attachment citizens had to Canada? Putting aside the value and rectitude of polls in general, this one evidently noted that so-called ‘millennials’ – apparently people aged 18 to 35 – showed a marked lack of emotional attachment to their country. This strikes me as a good thing. Ever-jingoistic, the media thought otherwise, with baleful comments about the shortage of national pride. It may just be me, but I keep hearing politicians talking about Canada as, “the best country in the world,” these days. It almost sounds like part of the nation’s name, like “America the Wonderful”, or Alexander the Great. Don’t get me wrong, I have great affection for my adopted country, and certainly consider it a better place to live than most others. But to say it is the greatest country in the world has grimmer implications. If we weren’t such a small place, in terms of population – the tiny British isles have three times as many people – we would be hauling these nationalistic fantasies into a far more dangerous place, and we would be…well, America.

Can a vast country, built by immigrants from everywhere on the backs of a crushed indigenous peoples, ever claim the uniqueness of being, “One nation under God”? We are forced to admit that ‘the West’, wherever it is now located, is largely a product of European economic migrants. With its disgraceful thousand-year history of endless petty wars, Europe can hardly lay claim to the virtues of peaceful coexistence. And thus Europeans have an ingrained tendency to seek hostile solutions, where other erstwhile nationals – the Chinese, for example – look to a more innate rectitude of purpose to overcome problems. China has five thousand years of continuous civilization – the Chi’in state is the world’s oldest political union – where the USA barely has 300 years. While the Chinese have a strong sense of cultural identity, it has never translated itself into imperial designs. The state has merely reclaimed territories lost during periods of internal weakness. The American model, aped now so often by Canada, involves an incapacity to see the world as not, or – God forbid! – even anti-American. Historically, the United States has either been xenophobic and enclosed, or else imperialistic, seeking to impose itself on vulnerable nations or peoples. With the current enthusiasm for world-cop-like missions, I see a danger in Canada pursuing this path. It is logically impossible, however.

The Angus Reid poll, seeking to measure the levels of national idolatry, fails to take into account the increasing number of Canadian citizens who can never claim to love this country more than any other – usually the one of their heritage. Thirty-five years away from it, I would still have to choose England over Canada, if the countries were ever at war. No doubt, the same is true for many if not most immigrants. Culture, heritage, language, whatever it is – they bind us. To hear “God bless America”, or “Canada, the greatest country in the world”, is thus alienating. It implies that some of us are Canadians, and others are not, when, in truth, only the abused First Nations have a right to that claim. The Quebecois have been here four centuries, yet many of them still identify themselves as other than strictly Canadian, or ‘Anglo’. Patriotic fervour – the military, the heroism! – may not be so apparent a disease here as it is in America, yet deadly diseases grow and spread.

The Trump groan, to “Make America great again” is – besides making one wonder when exactly the USA was ever great – a call to arms. Crush dissent! Muslims and Mexicans out! We’re the global cop and the world will now pay us for the task, whether or not anyone wants it! For people who have nothing or know nothing, it may incite some form of identity or pride. Yet for the rest it’s obnoxious. And patriotism is truly obnoxious. The One God’s on our side – everyone else is wrong, or with Satan. That’s how it works, and it has been the single greatest cause of human misery for all of recorded history. You love your country, you fight for it – no matter how right, wrong, or indifferent the casus belli may be. As studies of the human genome show, we are all the same. Even the idea of races is ill-founded. As the greatest photograph in history shows, we all live on one beautiful little blue planet – and we’ll have to share its bounty equally, ,or else perish, like many incompatible species before us. Old maxims are rarely incorrect: Patriotism? It’s the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.

 

Paul William Roberts

Canada, ISIS and Refugees

Tags

Canada, France, ISIS, Middle East, politics, refugees

 

                ^{Like the US attack on Afghanistan after September 11th, 2001, the French bombing} of a Syrian city was rash, emotional, and unplanned, resulting in possibly hundreds of innocent civilian deaths. It is worrying to find a government reacting like any other thug on the street, except for the military at its command to be ‘merciless’ – a declaration no civilized leadership ought to voice. As outlined in my previous blog-post, there is only one way to eliminate ISIS, and it involves accurate intelligence, and then the active presence of a tri-lateral army, particularly that of Special Forces, trained and able to differentiate civilians from the enemy.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s vow to disengage Canadian warplanes from the conflict is laudable, yet his promise to assist in other ways – like training of Syrian and  Iraqi troops – is flawed, and will still result in this country being viewed as a combatant. My previous blog explains why this West Asian catastrophe should be left to those nations responsible for it. The money saved will help us in the truly Canadian task of assisting refugees fleeing this nightmare.

Of course we must take great care in whom we admit, and I wonder how many are suited to the task of separating potential terrorists from genuinely displaced people. If lie-detectors are used – more as a deterrent than for their questionable accuracy – how many inquisitors will know the right questions to ask? A detailed knowledge of the Koran will be required, as well as of the apocryphal texts, and the versions utilized by Wahhabite clergy, and the websites on which these perversions of Islam appear. A familiarity with Arab tribal affiliations is also vital. Indeed, every Arabist in the country ought to be consulted, asked to suggest the questions posed to aspirants for asylum here. But the less involvement we have in the military struggle, the fewer terrorists will regard Canada as a deserving target. A glance at non-involved nations will alone drive this point home. ISIS is at war with countries viewed, historically and currently,  as enemies of, exclusively, Sunni Islam – or their distorted Wahhabite concept of it. To ignore this is to remain ignorant of what is really happening, both there and in the West.

 

Sincerely, with love,

 

Paul William Roberts

Election Songs

Tags

Canada, election, harper, john lennon, justin trudeau, leonard cohen, politics, songs

Song with Apologies to Leonard Cohen

 

Everybody knows Harper’s sinking,

Everybody knows his truth is lies,

In his eyes there’s that awful feeling,

No one will mourn him when he dies.

Everybody knows defeat will kill him,

Everybody knows he scorned the House;

Where he was never asked the question if his tactics came from Leo Strauss.

But the neo-Fascist shows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows the man’s a racist,

Everybody knows he’s a corporate slave,

And the rich are who his base is;

The rest of us his knaves.

That’s how Harper’s vision goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s bribing voters,

Everybody knows that greed works best;

Everybody knows he needs the floaters, but would exterminate the rest.

The Fascist shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he rigs elections,

Everybody knows that to win’s his real goal,

But he cannot abide defections,

Over ethics or burning coal. They wreck his phony pose, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s the one Prime Minister called ‘un-Canadian’ and even ‘sinister’;

No one cares where the hell he goes, but he’s gone, and everybody knows;

He’s now the stateless terrorist he dreamt up, the man in those media shows;

He caused the fear that crept up, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the war is raging; everybody knows Mr. Harper’s fate is toast,

And nothing’s there to save him, not even the Holy Ghost;

It’s by fiction the cash pile grows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows he won’t play fair;

Everybody knows his dirty tricks;

Everybody knows that Justin Trudeau will be the one a voter picks.

That’s what honest polls show, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his power is waning, everybody knows his platform’s fake;

Everybody knows his budget’s draining social programs into a filthy Tory lake.

That’s how corruption goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’d kill the planet, if his masters made a buck or two.

Everybody knows the way to end them is just a vote by me and you.

That’s what history shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his business plan was just a one-trick sham;

The eggs were in a basket, without bread or even ham;

As a glance at The Dow Jones shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the rich are richer, and we know where the money went;

Everybody knows the Middle Class is dwindling, the savings all now spent;

Everybody knows the banks are thriving, Thanks to Harper’s sly conniving, since that’s where our money goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows where the numbers never cease to grow, and no one can ever reap what they sow, as bank reports show, and everybody knows.

Spied upon, unfree, and over-taxed,

Poor even if we break our backs;

Such is the way our nation goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody thinks a vote for Harper is sure to make them rich,

As if cloth of gold could be fashioned by one single little stitch.

The deceiver in him shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he sang Imagine, John Lennon’s utopian song,

Everybody knows this was pure cynicism, an almost sacrilegious wrong.

Everybody knows he can’t imagine, everybody knows his soul’s long gone; and inside is an empty feeling, a dull resounding gong, like the darkness he’s imposed; and everybody knows.

Everybody knows we’ll have that piano; everybody knows the song we’ll sing, with Yoko’s kind permission, as the bells of all faiths ring;

Everybody knows we’ll show compassion, as hard as it might be, and everybody knows we’ll sing Imagine, and what the words will be: as for the pose: everybody knows….

 

( Sudden change of tune, with thanks and love to Lennon)

 

Imagine there’s no Harper, it’s easy if you vote,

No tyrant’s vile agenda, an economy still afloat;

Imagine all Canadians living once again in peace,

No egotistic leader wishing wars will never cease.

Imagine wealth is shared, no poverty or crime; fair treatment for First Nations, and a mandate to be kind.

Imagine equality and decency accorded every race; and all who seek asylum with a smile on every face.

You can’t say that I’m a dreamer because most of us agree sending Harper off to nowhere will set this nation free.

Imagine there’s a vote card clasped in your hand, and that your vote would make life better for all living in this land;

Imagine you don’t use it, and have to live with that, live with a representative lazier than your very lazy cat;

Imagine that those not voting lose many other rights, returning what was fought for back to a medieval night, when the barons owned everything, including all your rights.

Imagine there’s no government to help you, would you want that vote again? Imagine you had broken something no one now can mend: a wasted vote is guilty of summoning such an End.

For Harper is a schemer, and he’s not the only one;

I hope that you will join us, for the worshippers of Mammon are already on the run.

Imagine there’s no Harper, you won’t need to imagine long; for the vote will go to Justin, then you’ll wish you’d helped him on.

Imagine trust and hope in Ottawa, it’s no easy thing to do, which is why the end of Harper is eight years overdue.

 

(Suggestion for Harper’s Farewell Song)

 

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to;

You would cry too if your party dumped you…

++++++++++++++++++

Remember, your vote not only counts but is your responsibility to use, not for any party, but for the person you feel cares and will do his or her utmost for your area when in Ottawa. If a candidate has not visited your house or home in person, it is a good sign that they care little about your needs and will do even less about lobbying for them. Think about the qualities of an individual, not the vain promises of party leaders, which will become increasingly desperate and fictional over the next two weeks. This is not the USA: we elect representatives not leaders. Think carefully about the representatives you know, and vote for the best one, regardless of his or her party. This is a system that has proven its worth over many centuries. Cherish your good fortune to have such a fine system and the glorious land smart enough to avoid adopting the unworkable chaos of Washington.

 

As always with love,

 

Paul William Roberts

Harper’s Wars

Tags

Canada, harper, Iraq, neo-conservatism, politics, syria

O Canada! Where did our home and native land go? We used to be peacekeepers and reliably unbiased mediators; now we are neo-imperialist interloping warmongers, a dependable, if small, wing of the ever-covert and increasingly confused aims of long term US-UK foreign policy, which has no connection to come-and-go governments, being something hatched in the back-rooms of the deep state’s permanent and most un-democratic tyranny. It is surely time for the citizens of fading Western powers to admit our lives and taxes are part of a system which does not remotely resemble a democracy. Significant decisions are taken with no reference to the public will, and with, if any, no acceptable explanation. Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, whose soft, warm, reassuring voice increasingly resembles that of disgraced talk-show host and violent sexual sadist Jian Gomeshi, has exerted an unprecedented control over the media amounting to censorship and a violation of our Charter of Rights regarding free speech. No one gets to ask him probing and relevant questions. A gag-order silences nearly all politicians in his party, as well as such people as scientists – most of who work for the government or rely on federal funding. Environmental and social concerns take a remote back-seat to allegedly lower taxes and statistical legerdemain about the health of our economy. We are so easily fooled by appearances. As far as I know, the only politician here to have seen through Harper’s carefully stage-managed façade was ex-Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, who recounted a blunt conversation with the Prime Minister where Harper told him, “Don’t fuck with my country.” Williams described him, when met in private, as “a nasty man” – much as Gomeshi’s staff and female acquaintances characterized the seemingly mellow and liberal talk-show yacker.

Having just waded through the slough of tax-time, I wonder why more Canadians are not questioning the cost to us of our ill-advised involvement in frosty-war ventures like the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the meddling in someone else’s civil war in Syria, and the intervention to protect Iraqi oil-fields from their erstwhile owners and an element of fanatical Sunni Islamists – a situation created by the illegal US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. We can overlook the catastrophe in Afghanistan, which western forces have now shrugged off, achieving less than nothing for the years and expense of their involvement – an outcome anyone with a cursory knowledge of history could and did predict.

It is hard to say what is worse: a public broadcaster ultimately controlled and under-funded by a corrupt and deceiving government, or a massive media complex owned by and beholden to vast multi-national corporations deeply involved in big oil and the arms business. Both entail a warping, distorting and withholding of facts and context relating to any sensitive situation. For example: today we hear of ISIS ‘militants’ slaughtering 300-odd members of a ‘minority sect’ referred to as Yezidis. No broadcast I am aware of saw fit to explain just how minor a ‘sect’ the Yezidis really are – in anyone’s context. Having spent some time with Yezidis in Iraq, I can tell the reader that, in everyday parlance, they actually worship Satan, represented in their few temples by the idol of a gigantic snake. In reality they are an intriguing remnant of Gnostic cults which maintained that, after being expelled from heaven, Lucifer or Satan created the world in order to prevent himself from falling through all eternity. Ergo, the Devil is Lord of this world and the true God. Who has not experienced moments in their life when this thesis has not seemed persuasive? Either way, would it hurt the media to explain that Yezidis are not exactly a ‘minority sect’ of Islam? Similarly, would it hurt to explain the historical background to the ostensibly Shia-Sunni conflicts in Iraq and Syria? If we had a free media the truth would hurt no one, besides informing citizens about the squandering of their tax dollars and pounds on ventures of dubious merit and impossible resolution. But it would hurt the deep state back-room warmongers, whose motives would be seriously called into question. I have dealt with these issues in my two books on Iraq – The Demonic Comedy and A War Against Truth – yet am well aware that more and more people are unable to read books and need their news in a bite-sized form to which genuine information cannot conform. Most have trouble enough grasping the concept of two major Islamic factions, the Sunni and the Shia, which bear little resemblance to Protestant and Catholic divisions, let alone the existence of more minor branches on the tree of Islam, such as the Aluwites, the Ismailis, the Sufis, and so on. The advantage of being old is that much history is within personal memory. When I was a teenager Islam had no association with terrorism and appeared to be an attractive and exotic religion inextricably related to The Arabian Nights and other spoils from the colonial period. What changed? Well, as I keep saying, the Wahhabite sect – essentially an Islamic heresy – began to exert its influence over the faith on a global scale. This is the religion of Saudi Arabia, concocted in the 18^th century, and a perversion that reduces orthodox Islam to a prison code, banning music, dancing, singing, and regarding women as chattels, as well as condemning other forms of Islam, especially the Shia and Sufis, to the status of non-Islamic. Like Saudi royalty, the Wahhabite priesthood is hereditary and shares equally in the Kingdom’s oil wealth. What the princes did with their loot is well known; what the clerics did with their billions is not. In fact they established free schools all over the so-called Third World, from Africa, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Philippines and beyond. In these free schools – hard to turn down by impoverished nations – is taught the pernicious Wahhabite doctrine, including a vehement anti-Shia bias and the proselytising of a holy war called ‘Jihad’ – something previously interpreted as the inner struggle between our higher and lower selves, but now distorted to represent a literal war against all unbelievers. A thousand years ago Islam was the world’s great civilizing influence, advancing science and classical learning in an empire stretching from Spain to China; but the Crusades ended all that, and Islam’s subsequent history has been one of steady decline. All highly militant or fanatical movements, from Al-Quaeda to Al-Shebab, are both funded and inspired by Saudi Wahhabi sources. This is a fact. Anyone sincerely interested in ending this minor reign of terror would merely have to trace the money behind various movements and web-sites back to their Saudi sources. It was very telling when the mother of the boy responsible for murdering an honour guard at Ottawa’s war memorial said that her son wanted to go to Saudi Arabia to ‘study Islam’. Again, the media failed to pick up on the fact that anyone wishing to study orthodox Islam would go to Al-Ahram in Cairo, not Saudi Arabia, where all one could ‘study’ would be the Wahhabite heresy. To me, it proved that the web-site or sites behind the radicalising of this boy were expounding Wahhabism, not Islam. It seemed to beg for a close examination of such sites and an attempt to trace them back to their origins. None came, of course. Saudi Arabia seems to possess an immunity from condemnation and prosecution. Sealed off within its own time-warped bubble, the Kingdom issues no tourist visas, stifles all dissent, and, in general, makes other notorious tyrannies, like North Korea, seem positively Utopian. Why the protective cloak? Obviously, the answer is bound up with oil and a knee-bending obsequiousness to western interests. The regal or princely half of the story is an open book – Saudi Ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, is so close to the Bush family that he’s affectionately known as ‘Bandar Bush’, and the only foreign country EVER visited by George W. in a private capacity was Saudi Arabia (no tourists allowed) – but the other half, the equally oil-rich Wahhabi priesthood is unknown. No one can name the presiding Imam or High Priest; and no one seems willing to explore the global reach of Wahhabi indoctrination or its funding of exclusively Sunni-oriented terror cells. The Iraqi ‘insurgency’ – said to be some 30,000 strong, yet largely consisting of disaffected Sunnis ousted from power after the fall of Saddam’s Sunni tyranny – could be eradicated in a week, if the will to do it were there. The reason it is not there is because no one, least of all the Saudis, wants to see a Shia power block extending from Iran through Iraq to Syria (still controlled by the Aluwite Shia minority headed by the Assad dynasty).

The only conclusion one can draw from the current situation is that western interests are in maintaining a controlled destabilising Sunni element which will guarantee the kind of foggy chaos in which the US and UK prefer to operate, and which justifies an ongoing western military presence to ensure the safety of the fabulously rich (and still not fully explored) Iraqi oil fields, widely thought to exceed the rapidly dwindling trove of black gold in Saudi Arabia. Anyone who believes these nefarious neo-imperial ventures are not entirely about oil is an idiot.

Little wonder Harper’s day-long visit to Iraq swiftly took him to Kurdistan, where he bravely stood not ten kilometres from the so-called ‘front-line’: the Kurdish Peshmurga warriors are the only reliable soldiers in this manufactured struggle. They too suffered under Saddam – although it was Winston Churchill who advocated the first gas attack against them. Much like the Armenians, the Kurds have long awaited a homeland of their own, thus can be relied upon to hang onto it no matter what the cost. Those who once suggested a division of Iraq into three states – Kurdish, Sunni and Shia – were clearly forgetting that such a division would leave the Kurds and the southern Shia with all the oil, and a central Sunni homeland with…well, dates (37 varieties and the best dates on earth notwithstanding). The idea was no more viable than that of an Iraqi democracy, stemming from the same ignorance of internal ethnic and religious divisions.

There are many things no journalist is not allowed to ask Stephen Harper, but the most disturbing of them is surely the question of his close affiliation with the neo-conservative philosophy of Leo Strauss, who can be said to have founded the ideology during his tenure at the University of Chicago, where most leading lights in the neo-con movement – including Paul Wolfowitz, among other less well-known but immensely powerful back-room figures – were gathered. These people formed the American Enterprise Institute, principal advocate of the Iraq invasion, and strangely silent since the debacle they had sponsored became self-evident. Other leading neo-cons gravitated to Calgary, Harper’s home turf, and he was known to attend quasi-covert gatherings there that included several obvious journalists and media moguls. Those who have waded through Leo Strauss’s turgid tomes will have noticed that his political philosophy closely resembles fascism. Hardly surprising since he was a significant figure in the early German Nazi movement (before the overt emphasis on anti-Semitism), and his sponsor for US citizenship was Carl Schmidt, who crafted Hitler’s judiciary.  The Holocaust was not envisaged in this early period, and the more alarming rants in Mein Kampf were edited out. We now forget that fascism had a wide appeal at one point, and even early Zionists like Jabotinski were great admirers of Mussolini. The broad tenets of fascism are clear in Strauss’s work, just as they reveal themselves in Harper’s thinking and mode of governance. Lie to the people (they are fools who deserve no more); control the message and the media; conceal the decision-making process; appear to be concerned about the things most people are concerned with: taxes, the economy, security. Keep up a level of fear, and the suggestion of an enemy within – the most frightened populations have the strongest governments. Concoct incidents to generate fear if necessary. Make sure there is a need for greater and greater policing and security (be certain to broadcast all violent crimes, and make citizens believe criminal threats are increasing, particularly if they are not). It is all in Strauss, and it is all evident in the Harper governments actions; yet no one, to my knowledge, has ever questioned him about his neo-con connections or his adherence to Straussian ideology. Behind that mellow reassuring voice is “a nasty man”, many of whose hirelings have come to loathe him, and who has led this country far away from its cherished ideals, making us just another rapacious and hated western power. He has done this by subverting our democracy with complete disregard for our Constitution and the parliamentary process – to the point where the system is effectively broken, perhaps beyond repair. His achievement was only possible through an appeal to our basest instincts of self-interest; yet there is more to Canadian life than this – or I would hope so. It is surely time to rid ourselves of this would-be tyrant, and possibly even the entire system that has allowed such dark elements to take control of our nation and our lives. “Those willing to sacrifice freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security.”

 

With love as always, Paul William Roberts.

The C.I.A.

Tags

Canada, cia, human rights, liberalism, politics, United States of America

For the past 50 years, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has enjoyed a reputation for violence, murder, illegal warfare, political assassination, and large-scale drug trafficking, that has made organized crime look like shop-lifting. Thanks to one of the few consistently decent and honourable politicians in recent American history, Diane Feinstein, we now have the release of a 7000 page report detailing the criminal inhumanity and the psychopathic mendacity of the Agency. As I write, the story unfolds by every minute, so I shall certainly be commenting on it relentlessly, since I have long believed the CIA needs to be dissolved. Right now I have to attend a Liberal Party dinner in Ottawa, to support my friend and the ideal local candidate for MP, David Graham.

Jian Ghomeshi

Tags

Canada, cbc, jian ghomeshi, radio

While it is always disturbing to watch a trial by media violate fundamental human rights by an assumption of guilt before a court of law finds such to be the case, it was especially dismaying to find that the media in question, on tonight’s The Fifth Estate, were possibly as culpable in the allegations made against Jian Ghomeshi as Mr. Ghomeshi himself. Never have I been so ashamed of the C.B.C., whose program was a disgraceful attempt to exonerate itself from any responsibility in the affair by putting a patsy, a Mr. Boyce, in a seat hotter than he had been prepared for or, it seemed, warranted. Being blind, I have often listened to ‘Q’ over the past several years, during which time I gradually became aware of Mr. Ghomeshi’s personality quirks: his chronic insecurity and susceptibility to flattery; his sometimes oddly strained relationships with floor crew etc. But on his regular Friday thanks to staff, I do not recall the mention of a ‘Boyce’. I do, however, vividly recall his thanks to an executive producer who was the only person termed ‘Mister’ – it was something like ‘Mister Haram Shamani’; I do not have the means to confirm the exact name, but it did sound Arabic or Iranian – and I wonder why this man was not interviewed on the show. Since we know that two members of CBC staff viewed the videos Mr. Ghomeshi showed in apparent defense of his sexual conduct, I also wonder why the second man was not questioned or mentioned. Why also was the reason Mr. Ghomeshi would show such seemingly-incriminating videos not discussed? One is forced to assume that Ghomeshi felt they exhibited exonerating evidence of consensual activity, no matter how vile. Yet Boyce, the fall-guy, was seemingly there to take full responsibility for the public corporation’s actions – or inaction – when we had already heard of complaints to Human Resources and the well-known ‘toxic environment’ surrounding the show, which made women weep and console one another in washrooms, and others quit their jobs in despair. The Unmaking of Jian Ghomeshi did a fair job of documenting the making of Mr. Ghomeshi, a threadbare job of unmaking him, and an embarrassingly miserable job of justifying its own inability to say mea culpa. Ever-critical of police investigations into police malfeasance; and government committees to examine government misdemeanors, The Fifth Estate demonstrated astounding hypocrisy by presuming its ability to investigate its own parent, or boss. It was like listening to a Crown Attorney charged with aiding and abetting sexual assault interrogate a defendant charged with that sexual assault.

To add insult to injury, there was no mention of why it is not possible for other women who have complaints against Ghomeshi to come forward under guarantees of anonymity. It can be dome in the case of Mafia informants, and under-age victims of sexual abuse. It can surely be dome here, if only by means of sealed affidavits only available to legal staff. Such a probe might have assisted Ghomeshi in his long journey from allegations to convictions; yet instead one felt that the CBC was mainly interested in blaming the entire fiasco on this hapless Boyce – a strategy I suspect will not wash, since a scapegoat has to be higher up the food-chain. If ever anyone, but Charles I, was so concerned with the efficacy of the axe-man’s blade, it must be the CBC giving the Fuhrer in Ottawa a full go-ahead for dismantling a broadcaster which cannot even cast broad enough for its own safety.

Paul William Roberts

Aboriginal Canadians

Tags

aboriginal, Canada, politics

Of all the shameful acts Canada has managed to hide on the world’s stage – such a gentle, polite, equitable, and civilized people! – none is more egregious than the treatment of its First Nations, the only people who truly belong here, and truly seem to revere the land. An apology from the Prime Minister for the heinous residential schools, where acts took place which would warrant lengthy prison sentences today, is pathetically insufficient, especially when one hears of continuing racism, from a refusal to investigate the disappearance of native women, vicious internet abuse, and racist slurs in sports. King George III, who took over rule from the French, was adamant that the original inhabitants of this vast land be treated as fairly as any other subjects in his empire. Land treaties were negotiated, and, I believe, all broken by subsequent Governors-General, most of whom believed – as the Masai tribes of Africa still do – that whatever you can steal is yours.

This country was stolen, by fur traders and statesmen, from a people who believed that no man could own land. It belonged to the Great Spirit, who generously loaned certain areas to certain clans or tribes. A crime was committed. If I declared my property to be a nation, requesting United Nations’ troops to protect me from Ottawa’s police and army, what would happen? Nothing, or a puerile joke from the media. Yet that is ostensibly what happened here. To find that those who first occupied this land are treated as third-class citizens is appalling beyond words. They are the only people entitled to spout racist remarks (‘go back to where you belong’), yet their nature forbids this. They believe in the equality of all human beings. Since the rest of us are all from somewhere else, no matter how many generations back, anyone uttering such vile comments ought to be returned to wherever it was they or their ancestors came from.

Nothing was more uplifting than to see the ‘Idle No More’ movement gather momentum. I hope it detoxifies aboriginals from the poison they have been fed for 200 years, a poison that demoralises and destroys self-respect. I hope their lawyers take violated treaties to court, and that, eventually, Canadians are forced to pay for all the non-reservation lands stolen from our First Nations, and at current prices too, the money divided equally between every Native woman, man, and child. This alone would be a sincere apology for what was once clearly intended to be an extermination, both physical and mental. Perhaps we shall discuss the Holocaust attempted south of our border another time, since the pack of lies termed ‘history’ down there makes even our own barbarity seem benign.

Love, Paul William Roberts