C. L. Cook - It’s difficult to grieve for the loss of a relative you’ve never known. Sure, you feel for the pain of your family remembering ‘Dear Old,’ but the visceral sympathy just isn’t there. Reading today laments from my fellow Canadians of the death of the country they’ve known and loved leaves me feeling much as a funereal interloper; “I never knew the old girl, but I hear she was super.”
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Canada, eh?
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
August 13, 2005
I was born more than forty years past in the epicentre of the country, Toronto (epicentre of the Universe to hear The Rest of Canada squawk about it). Since, I’ve lived on the west coast, watching from afar the doings of one federal potentate after the other as they fall over themselves to best serve the interests of capital and the true Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Some weepy citizen Aunties may wag fingers, begging I recall our national opposition to cousin Sam’s Far East rampages of the Sixties and Seventies, tearfully citing our collective taking-to-bosom of those brave dissenters seeking shelter from America’s bugle call. Difficult to feel the patriotic power of that distant day when this day I watch my fellow countrymen and women marched into the lion’s mouth of Afghanistan in service of yet another call to arms.
Instead, I remember Prime Minister Pearson berated and shaken by the lapels like a recalcitrant delinquent by LBJ, then sent packing back to his northern doghouse with the Butcher of Asia’s reprimand ringing in his ears. “You pissed on my rug.” Instead, I remember the cretin PM’s Mulroney and Chretien who in turn delivered the national economy in perpetuity, then aiding and abetted three illegal wars and a blasphemous decade-long siege of sovereign nations at the behest again of their beltway masters.
Today many(?) Canadians are upset that U.S. State Troopers are training and accompanying the RCMP, presumably to better instruct their harassment of the good citizens as they travel the highways and byways of Canada, (hardly necessary); I hear tut-tuts that American military narcotics agents work in concert with local police to mount sting operations on local illegal drugs peddlers while the U.S. Navy inhabits Canada’s coastal cities for shore leave; I see brows furrowed at “interdiction” policies that refuse political refuge for the world's poor, hungry, and oppressed masses seeking shelter in this country, all on the whims and worries of the United States; I behold red-faced indignation at extradition and "rendition" granted on plainly bogus justifications proffered by American Justice; I watch some sputter rage at the denial of refuge for Iraq war resistors (poor Pearson would roll over in his doghouse); I hear disgust opined as former government ministers enjoin the country be made more “accessible” from their havens in venal multi-national corporate boardrooms; but, I neither fret, furrow, nor redden my mien in frustrated outrage.
Why get upset? The transfer of law, order, money, and people through D.C. diktats is the norm; at least as long as I’ve been here.
Canada today participates and profits the perpetual war economy more than most. Despite conscience soothing platitudes, delivered to salve the Canadian mass, this “country” has long since sold whatever sovereignty it pretended to and is now, truly an adjunct of U.S. policies at home, abroad, and in outer space.
“Poor old Auntie. I would have loved to have known her.”
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from CFUV Radio at the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as a contributing editor to PEJ News. You can check out the GR Blog at GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com
Annotations
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty – U.S. State Dept. :
General - http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial_690.html
Canada - http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial_682.html
Jeremy Hinzman - http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/
Kevin Benderman - http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=172
War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada) - http://resisters.ca/index.html
Softwood Lumber Dispute - http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/
Marijuana Policy - http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3097&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0
NAFTA and Softwood Ruling 08/2005 - http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1123868371563_119277571/?hub=Canada
Pearson and LBJ - http://www.answers.com/topic/lester-bowles-pearson
Canada to Afghanistan - http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2848
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2602
Canadian Immigration Policy - http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/42861.php
Canadian Elite’s Sedition - http://www.victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/39182.php
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