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Mar
27/03 More
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My
Canadian rant
I
posted the following rant on Sk8 Jesus. Feel free to
pass along.
Recently,
American ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci told a
conference of industry and conservatives that Canada
will soon feel the ire of the United States because
of its failure to endorse and support the current
attack on Iraq. He ominously warned that 'security
trumps trade', pointing at America's ability to squeeze
Canada where it hurt, our massive reliance upon cross-border
trade with our only geographic neighbour. This is
only the most telling low point in a wave of resentment
from America toward the rest of the world for the
failure of the majority of countries to support the
largest invasion of the Middle East since the last
Gulf War of 1991, resentment that is now directed
at Canada. In editorials, opinion pages and expressed
on Internet forums, Americans have expressed their
anger at being 'betrayed' or 'abandoned' by their
closest allies, Canada now among them.
It
seems now that Americans (and their few supporters
in Canada who declare their 'shame' at the lack of
Canada's open support for the Iraqi adventure) need
to be reminded of the many ways in which Canada has
supported the Americans and American causes recently
and in the past.
These
people should be reminded that on September 11th it
was a Canadian in charge of NORAD who routed all air
traffic for the entire continental airspace. It was
Canadians who took in all the trans-Atlantic and Pacific
air travel and closed the longest undefended border
in the world for the first time despite there being
absolutely no evidence that any of the hijackers came
from Canadian airspace or soil. Canadians were among
the many victims from all countries who died or who
suffered because of the attacks of September 11th.
It was Canadians who took in the thousands of people
who could not otherwise stay over when they could
not get to their loved ones for days and weeks without
consideration of expense. It was Canadians as well
as the rest of the world who donated money by the
millions to help out New York and who sent firefighters,
search and rescue teams and other experts to Ground
Zero. Indeed, when Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda were
tracked to Afghanistan, Canadians sent troops, infantry,
snipers, commandos and, yes, peacekeepers to that
country as part of a multilateral action to root out
terrorism and continues to patrol Afghanistan to make
that country more than its recent past.
Certain
Americans in charge of the United States now feel
that the solution to terrorism is to go blowing up
other countries and now feel the only way for Americans
to feel safe is to remake the world in a new Roman
Empire. Like Canada cannot afford to feel the ire
of our great neighbour to the south we also do not
have the military strength to blow up every country
that menaces our citizens. Whereas Americans may feel
somewhat safe going abroad feeling that at any moment
Delta Force or a Predator Drone can menace whatever
country they are in if anything should happen to them,
Canadians can only feel protected by our reputation
as a country that does not easily go to war or impose
its vision on others.
Certain
Americans are fond of pointing out that they went
to war twice to help Europe and Asia in the two world
wars. But in those two world wars Canadians were fighting
and dying by the thousands on the side of Europeans
and Asian allies for years and months while the United
States stood on the sidelines and certain Americans
such as the grandfather of the current President carried
out a brisk trade with the enemy of that time. Americans
remember the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour as a
matter of rote but how many Americans know that Canadians
by the thousands fell fighting the Japanese in Singapore
and Hong Kong long before the United States was stirred
in the Pacific theatre. America's role in finishing
both wars is not denied, but neither should it be
denied that other countries were sacrificing far from
their shores when the cause was seen as just and necessary
long before American involvement.
Neither
Canada nor the continental United States have felt
the true destructive potential of war in the 20th
century but from this period of grace Canadians and
our American neighbours seem to have taken different
lessons. Canadian diplomats reacted to the horror
of global war by being instrumental in the creation
of the United Nations that provides a platform for
discussion, a safety valve for conflict and through
its various agencies a tool to bring knowledge, emergency
assistance and development to the troubled areas of
the world. Through its economic and logistical power,
the United States has done the same, but do Americans
laud their accomplishments using soft power the same
as their frequent exercises of military power? The
current popularity of the war in Iraq in American
opinion polls seems to provide the answer. Now it
seems that the U.S. President has directed his power
and formed public opinion toward the dismantling of
the only open forum for conflict resolution that the
world has in favour of military solutions.
In
many statements, the current American administration
has declared their intention to bring democracy and
rule of law to the countries who now receive American,
British and Australian bombs and missiles. Yet, the
'coalition of the willing' express disappointment
at governments, like Canada's, who are following the
will of the people who have expressed their own disappointment
at the break down in multilateralism and negotiations,
which are only governments acting on democratic principles.
Prompted by the desires of their people, these same
leaders acted in the UN to bring pause to the Ango-American
push towards war. To many Canadians, the essence of
the multilateral way is fairness, where all countries
are given the same opportunity to voice their interests
regardless of their power or their stake. Seen in
this way the smallest country or the country with
the most dubious reputation has at least the chance
to demand that conflict be examined in the full light
of the world. The America of President Bush on the
other hand has acted without care to the perception
of fairness or legality, not only by pressing on with
a war without UN endorsement but by demanding that
Iraqi diplomats be ejected by other countries, by
bombing Iraqi media facilities and by imprisoning
combatants from the Afghanistan conflict outside of
the Geneva conventions while demanding the same treatment
for its own soldiers. Fairness also is in question
when the causus belli is stated to be the uncovering
of the weapons of mass destruction (yet to be discovered)
while on the eve of the conflict America demonstrated
a stunning conventional bomb rivalling the power of
a nuclear device in an open threat to Iraq.
Given
the perception of these actions, it is not surprising
then that Canadians cannot bring themselves to support
the war on Iraq and must 'disappoint'acrimonious interests
in America. The grounding of this position has been
stated but likely to be ignored by the drum beaters
in the White House and their supporters just as past
Canadian contributions to peace and security in the
world are likely to be forgotten by those only interested
in raw power.
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Mar
21/03 More
in weblog archive |
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The
Tricoleurs Trilogy on DVD
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| The
beautiful Irene Jacob in "Red" |
This week I picked up one of my most anticipated DVD
purchases: the beautiful "Tricoleurs Trilogy"
film set, directed by the late master Khrystof Kieslowski.
The films: "Blue", "White" and "Red"
all represent colours of the French flag standing for
Liberte, Equalite and Fraternite. Each is a self-contained
personal story that sums up that theme. In "Blue",
the main character is the widow of a famous composer
who has to come to terms with the fatal accident that
kills her family and also with breaking from a past
where she had subsumed her identity for the sake of
her husband. In "White", a Polish man smuggles
himself into France as he searches for his estranged
wife. In "Red", a fashion model discovers
a kinship with someone quite different from her, a cynical,
retired judge. These were some of the most meaningful
and wonderfully photographed films of the 90s, each
featuring glowing beauties in title roles: Juliette
Binoche, Julie Delpy and Irene Jacob. They are really
films where you fall in love with the women and with
their stories (though Julie Delpy's role is not as paramount
in "White"). The DVD transfers are good but
not stellar (in the case of "Red"). However,
the music sounds extremely lush in the audio track,
something which is especially needed because of the
rich soundtrack by Zbigniew Priesner in all three films.
War
watching
 Even
at work I've been able to keep track of the war's progress.
In fact, I'm helped by Destiny's Clipstream™ Live
technology which I was tasked to promote by creating
a special war email shell that can be sent to anyone
who wants to watch Canadian news while at work. The
development team pulled this off and unfortunately the
traffic suddenly ballooned and kicked the server off
because of sudden demand. Now, it's back to normal and
hosting an adverage of 60 users. See
it now >>
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More
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Tonight
Bush will issue his ultimatum on the war against Iraq.
I feel very upset about this, especially in light of
the events since September 11th. That evil act had almost
everyone in the world feeling for the United States.
Since then, Bush and his cronies in the ultra-conservative,
religious right who are in power in the White House
have disappated all that solidarity in favour of a unilateral
march toward American hegemony. Following these events,
I can't help but feel a chill knowing that powerful
people are forcing the world down a path that the majority
of people do not want. They have created an atmosphere
where the world has to take sides. People will die for
a war that benefits only a few. 
