Bring Him Home!

March 10 2009

I hope that you are aware of the Abousfian Abdelrazik story. If not I ask you to go to the sites below and familiarize yourself with it.
This is a story that will rend the heart of anyone who has one.
Will you use your considerable influence to pressure the Conservative government to issue this man a passport so that he can fly home before his plane ticket (that Canadians have generously bought for him) expires?

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2009/200904/20090402.html

The Best Christmas Ever

It was only two months before Christmas and Santa was very worried.  Surely the rumors could not be true.  The United Nations had declared Canada to be the best country in which to live, and yet he had heard there were many farmers who could not make a living from the land. Workers were not making a decent living and many people did not have enough to eat.  Santa sat in his office smoking his pipe and pondering what he should do.
Finally he summoned his two most reliable elves (Black and Decker) into his office and told them what he had decided. He instructed them to go on a fact-fining tour to find out if it were true that farmers were not producing enough food and as a result many Canadians did not have enough to eat.
Black was the elf that looked after the reindeer and was almost as good as Santa at driving the sleigh.  Decker on the other hand was a computer nerd who would record everything they learned on his laptop computer.
Black and Decker arrived over Saskatchewan just as the sun was beginning to rise.  They looked down upon farm after farm and were pleased to note that all the granaries were bulging with grain and many farms had grain piled in the yard.  Then they flew over huge hog barns filled with thousands of hogs and feedlots filled with cattle.  “How could a rumor get started that people were going hungry when there was so much food around?” they asked.  Just then Decker saw a woman in her yard  walking from the barn toward  her house.  “Let’s land and ask that woman if she has an explanation,” they said in unison.
The woman was very surprised to see Santa’s sleigh so soon before Christmas but when the elves explained their mission, she invited them into her kitchen for a cup of cocoa.  The woman said her husband was away driving the school bus and wouldn’t be home until five o’clock.  She said she didn’t know very much about the farm as it was her husband that did all the work.  All she did, she said, was do the bookkeeping, the yard work and drive the tractor on the weekends when she wasn’t teaching kindergarten.  “It is true,” she said, “we have no problem producing food, it is just that we can’t seem to make enough money at it.”  “What is money?” the elves asked again in unison.  The woman looked surprised at the question. “It’s a little hard to explain,” she said.  “Perhaps it would be easier if I show you.”  She disappeared into her bed room and soon returned with a large hand bag.  She emptied the bag  onto the kitchen table and started to sort through its contents.  After a while she found the little change purse she was looking for.  She opened it and took out a five-dollar bill.  “This,” she said,  handing the bill to Decker, “is what money looks like.”  “It looks like a piece of paper to me,” Black said.  “It is paper,” the woman assured them.  “Can you eat it?” asked Decker.  “Of course not!” the woman said. “But you can exchange it for anything you want, including things you can eat.”  “So if everyone had enough of this paper  no one would go hungry?” the elves asked.   “That’s right,” she said. “We have lots of food; the problem is we just don’t have enough of that kind of paper.”  “Who makes this kind of paper?” the elves asked. “The government does,” she said.  “So, why doesn’t the government make more of this paper and give it to the people who need food, shelter and clothing?” the elves asked.  “Oh, the government could never do that,” she explained. “That would cause a terrible disease called inflation which would make some people very sick.”   “Did you ever have this disease?” the elves asked.  “We have had inflation many times,” she said, “but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone around here.  I understand it did make a lot of rich people sick for a while, although they all seemed to recover very well as soon as the inflation had passed.”
Decker made a few entries in his computer and then they thanked the woman for her time and headed for the city.
Soon they were passing over a big building with a lot of smoke coming out of the chimney.  They landed on the roof and entered through a skylight.  They found many people working on big machines making automobiles.  Black went up to a dirty faced man working at a lathe and asked if he could have a few words with him.  “Not now,” he said, “you’ll have to wait until my coffee break.”  Black and Decker went into the coffee room and waited.  After a while the dirty- faced man came
in for his coffee.  “Why do you work so hard on that machine,” Decker asked.  “I have to,” the man said with a sigh, “I need the money to feed and clothe my family.”  Every year the money buys less and less, so every year I must work longer and longer.”  The elves were about to ask why the factory owner didn’t give the workers more money but then they remembered what the farm woman had said about the terrible disease inflation.  So they thanked the young man for his time and walked out onto the street.
A bright SAFEWAY sign caught the eye of the two elves.  When they went in they could not believe the sight that greeted them.  Food as far as the eye could see.  There was aisle after aisle of fresh fruits and vegetables, canned goods piled almost to the ceiling, and bulk goods in barrels from wall to wall and meat of every kind.  “How can little bits of paper keep the people from feeding themselves when there is so much food around?”  This was the question the elves kept asking themselves.
Then they walked back out onto the street.  The pair had not gone far when they came upon a long line of people waiting to get through a door.  “With so many people wanting to get in, what ever is behind that door must be very special,” the elves thought.  When they inquired, a young woman informed them that they were all waiting to get in to the food bank.  She explained that, because they were out of work, they didn’t have enough money to buy food, so they had to rely on the generosity of others.  “Why don’t you go to the factory and help the young man who is working so hard?” they asked.  “Then both of you would have a job and both of you would have enough to eat.”  “Oh, I could never do that,”  the young woman said “That would cause the great disease inflation and rich people would get very sick.”  Although she had never had the disease herself, she was assured by the Government that the disease was very debilitating for those who got it.
All this was very puzzling to the elves.  “Surely there must be someone around with enough money,” they thought.  While the elves were pondering this question they noticed a pair of individuals approaching who were dressed unlike anyone they has ever seen before.  The man was wearing a three piece suit and the woman was dressed in a long black fur coat.  “Excuse me, sir,” Black said. “I wonder if you could help us. We are looking to find some one who has a lot of money and we are wondering if you know of such a person?”  The man said, ” You need to look no further—we are people who have a lot of money.”  The elves were very happy to meet these wealthy people and told them they were the first people they had met who had enough money.  “Hold on a minute,” the man said, “I didn’t say I had enough money, I just said I had a lot of money.  I will never have enough.”  The elves were very surprised at this and asked, “Do you spend all your money on things you need like food and clothing and shelter?”  “Of course not,” the man said, “we have everything we want, so all the extra money goes into the bank where the pile gets bigger and bigger. Even if we never put any more in the bank the pile will just keep getting bigger and bigger.”  “If the pile keeps getting bigger doesn’t that mean someone is creating  more money and won’t that cause the dreaded disease called inflation,” the elves asked?   The man laughed at this suggestion and the woman laughed too.  “No, no,” he said, “the disease inflation is caused by the government creating the new money.  If the bank creates the new money it doesn’t cause the disease inflation, it causes something good called prosperity. ” Decker suggested he give some of his money to those who didn’t have enough so that every one would have enough to eat.
“I could never do that,” the man said, “The reason those people don’t have any money because they are lazy.  If I were to give them money they would become even lazier and very soon no one would work and then we would all starve.”  “If you have most of the money, how then do the poor people get enough to feed themselves?”  Decker asked. “That is very easy to explain,” the man said,  “You see, as my pile of money gets bigger and bigger it becomes harder and harder to manage.  I have to hire more and more people to hold it down to keep it from blowing away on windy days.  But try as I might, sometimes the wind is so strong that some of my money blows away and is picked up by the poor people, and that’s how they get their money.  It’s called the trickle-down theory. The more money the rich have, the more money the poor will have.  It’s all very simple,” he said.   The man went on, “Sometimes I wish God didn’t make the wind blow so hard,”.  “You know, I have no control over God, although I’m working on that,”  he said with a laugh. The woman thought this was very funny and laughed so hard that her fur coat shook all over.  Decker thought she looked just like a Labrador retriever shaking itself after coming out of the water.  He tried to imagine what she would look like with a duck in her mouth and then he started to laugh too.  The woman thought he was laughing at the man’s joke and this made her laugh even louder.
The sun was beginning to set, but by this time Black and Decker knew they had learned every thing there is to know about food and how it is distributed.  With Black’s capable hands on the reins, the reindeer headed straight for the North Pole while Decker was busy typing up his report on his laptop computer.  Santa was delighted with Decker’s report.  If only he had known this years ago, helping poor people  would have been much easier.  Santa reached for the phone and called God.   God was very understanding and agreed to do what Santa  requested.
At precisely midnight on Christmas eve the wind started to blow.  It blew harder than it had ever blown before.  It blew from the north it blew from the east and it blew from the south and from the west.  No one had ever remembered there being so much wind before.  For the first time in history Santa was not out in the cold delivering food and clothing to needy people and toys to children.  He was snuggled in front of his fireplace with a glass of eggnog at his elbow, secure in his belief that the big wind would blow wealth and happiness to all the poor and dispossessed
“Surely this will be the best Christmas ever,” he said.

Ask For A Radwanski

April 10 2006

George Radwanski will be remembered as the Privacy Commissioner who “outraged and saddened” Auditor-General Sheila Fraser by his abuse of power, reign of terror, lavish unjustafiable expenses and cronyism. However the favors handed him by Revenue Canada has not generated as much publicity.

A few days before he got his plush government appointment he was allowed to clear $557,000 in back taxes with a lump-sum payment of $62,726 —a bit more than 11c for every dollar that he owed.

Next spring when income tax time roles around, I think we should all ask for a “Radwanski.”  That is we’ll pay 11% of the amount owing and promise to remit the rest when Radwanski pays his.  After all, what’s fair for one is fair for all don’t you think?

Feeling Safe?

August 03 2003

I wonder if anyone is starting to feel safe now that we have bombed Afghanistan into a moonscape, (as if that hadn’t been done already) turfed out the Talaban and put a different band of war-lords in power.  Since then a French oil tanker was disabled by terrorists and suicide bombers have killed dozens of people in Bali and Kenya and an Israeli passenger jet barely escaped being shot down by a hand-held rocket launchers.

So now we are planning to bomb the stuffing out of Iraq (as if that hasn’t been done already too) and leave a generation of starving limbless children behind to show the world how much we detest terrorism.

Gee, I’m starting to feel safe already.

Decent And Intelligent

June 4 2004

Recently several letters have appeared in the Prairie Post commenting on the US election and on American foreign policy in general.  These letters reminded me of something George Bernard Shaw had written.  He used three concepts to describe the positions of individuals in Nazi Germany: intelligence, decency and Naziism. He argued that if a person was intelligent and a Nazi, he was not decent. If he was decent and a Nazi, he was not intelligent. And if he was both decent and intelligent, he was not a Nazi.

Is it possible for a decent intelligent person to support US foreign policy?  Perhaps, but in my opinion it would be impossible for a decent informed person to do so.

I could give a few dozen examples but let’s stick to Iraq. Knowing what we now know, how could any decent informed person support this US invasion which has killed up to 100,000 innocent Iraqis and over 1300 American military personal?  Now we know there were no weapons of mass destruction or Iraqi connection to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York.  We also know that the US supported Saddam Hussein by supplying him with money and arms (even poison gas) while he was carrying out his worst atrocities in both Iraq and Iran.

We know as well that the US has coveted Iraq’s oil and had plans to invade Iraq long before the 9/11 attack.

Knowing all this, how can any decent informed person support it?  Lets hope that your readers are decent and informed enough to not even try.

Haiti

January 15 2005

My guess is, most Canadians don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Canada’s role in Haiti, but they should.  Haiti is a political, economic, human rights mess and Canada is there helping to keep it that way.

A coup against the constitutional government of Haiti, which took place last year, has given rise to massive human rights violations.  Under the interim government, backed by the United States, Canada and France, human rights conditions are worse in Haiti now then they have been in years.

Members of the deposed Aristide government are being beaten, executed or thrown in prison without being charged and Canada is there training the very forces that are guilty of many of these atrocities.

Slowly word is leaking out and when Canadians learn the full extent of our complicity they will be outraged.

The Paul Martin government must be forced to withdraw from Haiti and apologize to Haiti for this misadventure..

Governments do respond to public opinion.   The Prime Minister can be emailed at martin.p@parl.gc.ca and a letter to him addressed to he House of Commons doesn’t even require a stamp.

How would We React?

July 11 2005

I wonder how Canadians would react if we were invaded by two superpowers, our major cities reduced to rubble, our resources sold to the lowest bidders and one hundred thousand of our people killed.  Would we respond with acts of terror on innocent civilians in the invading countries? I hope not.  Killing innocent people can never be justified. But how many of us would act rationally when our children are being killed, maimed and starved?

The only way to stop terrorism is to put an end to our own acts of terror. Right now the United States and Britain are two of the world’s biggest terrorist nations but Canada is not far behind. Within just ten years we have invaded counties in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Haiti. None of these invasions were authorized by the United Nations and none were justified.

Don’t think for a moment that these unlawful intrusions have gone unnoticed by those that kill innocent civilians in reprisal.

Why is it that when a few dozen are killed by bombs in London it is terrorism but when Britain kills a few thousand in Iraq it is not?  Will we correctly blame Canada’s foreign intrusions if someone bombs us?

Common Sense

June 23 2008

Is there anyone left in this world with a lick of common sense? The answer is yes but they are few and far between. One that I am aware of is Mohamed ElBaradei. He is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He warned that an attack on Iran over its nuclear program would turn the region into a fireball.
Here we are on the brink of WW111 because the United States and/or Israel are planning to drop bombs on Iran. Why? Because they say Iran has weapons of mass destruction. Where have we heard that before? If we like the invasion of Iraq we are going to love an attack on Iran. They are planning the attack in spite of the US National Intelligence Estimates concluding that there had been no on-going nuclear weapons program in Iran since the fall of 2003 and ElBaradei has concurred that the IAEA has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.

Where do the Leaders of our political parties stand on this? If you want to know you will have to guess, because as far as I can tell they aren’t saying. None of them answer my emails and a search of their websites is unrewarding.

There is one way to get their attention though. We must ask our MPs what their stand is on this issue and tell them that their answer will determine how our ballot will be marked in the next election.

Hypocrisy

February 26 2007

When it comes to Hypocrisy, the United States takes the cake.  It takes the soup, the salad and the main course too for that matter.  Consider this.  A few weeks ago Saddam Hussein was hanged for killing 148 Iraqis who had plotted to kill him back in July 1983.  A heinous crime for sure but what was the US response when the crime actually took place?   A few months after the slaughter, Donald Rumsfeld was in Bagdad, presenting Saddam with a set of golden spurs from Ronald Reagan. After that the US established diplomatic relations with Iraq and started selling it helicopters, toxic chemicals and pathogens. These are the same helicopters Saddam used to gas the Kurds in his own country and the Iranians, with the aid of satellite photos supplied by the United States.

Now the US is getting ready to invade Iran. The motive?  You guessed it, weapons of mass destruction. The US says Iran is developing an atomic bomb. But thirty years ago the US was working on a plan to build a nuclear industry in Iran including giving them control over large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium —the means to develop a nuclear bomb.

That was of course back when the Shah was in control in Iran. He was another human rights violator who came to power when the US backed a coup to overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government.

The hypocrisy goes on. Back in 2003 Iran made a proposal intended to resolve the differences between the US and Iran. In it Iran agreed to abide by United Nations nuclear safeguards.  The Bush administration refused it.

A year later the European Union and Iran reached an agreement. Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for assurances that the US and Israel would not attack Iran. Under US pressure the Europe backed down and Iran renewed uranium enrichment.

Again in 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Agency, proposed that all production and processing of weapons-usable material be under international control. To date only one country has agreed.  You guessed it, Iran.

Now we are on the brink of World War 111 and it doesn’t seem to be an issue with any of the political parties in Ottawa or with the Canadian public for that matter.

One thing for sure if we have another world war it will be our last.

Message To The NDP

July 10 2004

The message from the NDP is, “Canadians voted for change.  Millions voted NDP for change that puts working Canadians at the front of the line.”  The very opposite is true. The soft Liberal vote went to the NDP to defeat Conservatives and give the Liberals a chance to stay in power or to keep the Conservatives from winning a majority. In other words the fickle Liberal vote went to the NDP to prevent change. This can hardly be reassuring for the NDP.

Jack Layton missed a great opportunity to clearly set his party apart from both the Liberals and the Conservatives and give the NDP a real chance to be the official opposition after the next general election.

Jack gave the same response to every question.  He asked us to give him more seats in the House of Commons so he could squeeze more goodies out of whomever we elect. “Park your vote with us just this one time because the Liberals need a time out,” he said.   What will his slogan be in the next election?  Vote for the Liberals, they’ve learned their lesson?

In the first English debate each leader was asked how he saw Canada fifty years from now. Jack, like the other leaders, answered with platitudes.  There must have been thousands of progressive viewers sitting on the edge of their chairs, as I was, waiting for Jack to say we are not going to have a country twenty years from now if things keep going the way they are.   There is tremendous pressure on Canada to harmonize our economy with the US economy but this was never seen as a major issue by the NDP.  Oh sure, Jack threw out the line from time to time that he was not going to follow the George Bush agenda.  He pointed out his opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to putting weapons in space, but I never heard him expand on it.   Even so, the point is, these two issues don’t set him apart from the Liberals.

Another big issue that would have staked out territory in bold relief from both the Liberals and the Conservatives is Canada’s illegal invasions of Haiti and Afghanistan. NDP foreign affairs critic Alexa McDonough voiced her opposition to both these misadventures in the House of Commons.  Why was it important enough to rise in the House where it got little notice or media coverage but not important enough to make it an election issue? It is hard to believe that Canada (with France and the USA) overthrew a democratic government in Feb., 2004 and the NDP did not make it a major issue in the election.  Many times during the election Paul Martin said he was going to have an independent foreign policy. Jack never challenged him to explain how he could say that and still justify his role in the overthrow of the legitimate government of Haiti.

How would Harper have responded? We will never know.

There has been a conspiracy of silence by the Canadian news media to keep Canadians from being outraged by what Canada is doing in Haiti.  Jack could have exposed the duplicity of Martin and his zeal for helping the USA make the world safe for dictatorships, but he never did. The Liberal government was applauded more than once for not sending troops to Iraq. And yet, here we are sending more Canadians to Afghanistan which will have the effect of freeing up American troops to go to Iraq.  If the NDP is not willing to expose the hypocrisy of the Martin government, who will?

The NDP still has a chance to turn things around.  It can raise these issues every day in the House of Commons and across the land.   It must fight to make Canada a free and independent country.  It must demand that Canadian troops be withdrawn from Haiti and Afghanistan.  Public opinion would be solidly behind it if the NDP were to take the lead.     We can’t wait until more body bags show up on Canada’s shore.

Anything less and the NDP will soon be remembered as a feckless experiment in the misty past.

July 10 2004

The message from the NDP is, “Canadians voted for change.  Millions voted NDP for change that puts working Canadians at the front of the line.”  The very opposite is true. The soft Liberal vote went to the NDP to defeat Conservatives and give the Liberals a chance to stay in power or to keep the Conservatives from winning a majority. In other words the fickle Liberal vote went to the NDP to prevent change. This can hardly be reassuring for the NDP.

Jack Layton missed a great opportunity to clearly set his party apart from both the Liberals and the Conservatives and give the NDP a real chance to be the official opposition after the next general election.

Jack gave the same response to every question.  He asked us to give him more seats in the House of Commons so he could squeeze more goodies out of whomever we elect. “Park your vote with us just this one time because the Liberals need a time out,” he said.   What will his slogan be in the next election?  Vote for the Liberals, they’ve learned their lesson?

In the first English debate each leader was asked how he saw Canada fifty years from now. Jack, like the other leaders, answered with platitudes.  There must have been thousands of progressive viewers sitting on the edge of their chairs, as I was, waiting for Jack to say we are not going to have a country twenty years from now if things keep going the way they are.   There is tremendous pressure on Canada to harmonize our economy with the US economy but this was never seen as a major issue by the NDP.  Oh sure, Jack threw out the line from time to time that he was not going to follow the George Bush agenda.  He pointed out his opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to putting weapons in space, but I never heard him expand on it.   Even so, the point is, these two issues don’t set him apart from the Liberals.

Another big issue that would have staked out territory in bold relief from both the Liberals and the Conservatives is Canada’s illegal invasions of Haiti and Afghanistan. NDP foreign affairs critic Alexa McDonough voiced her opposition to both these misadventures in the House of Commons.  Why was it important enough to rise in the House where it got little notice or media coverage but not important enough to make it an election issue? It is hard to believe that Canada (with France and the USA) overthrew a democratic government in Feb., 2004 and the NDP did not make it a major issue in the election.  Many times during the election Paul Martin said he was going to have an independent foreign policy. Jack never challenged him to explain how he could say that and still justify his role in the overthrow of the legitimate government of Haiti.

How would Harper have responded? We will never know.

There has been a conspiracy of silence by the Canadian news media to keep Canadians from being outraged by what Canada is doing in Haiti.  Jack could have exposed the duplicity of Martin and his zeal for helping the USA make the world safe for dictatorships, but he never did. The Liberal government was applauded more than once for not sending troops to Iraq. And yet, here we are sending more Canadians to Afghanistan which will have the effect of freeing up American troops to go to Iraq.  If the NDP is not willing to expose the hypocrisy of the Martin government, who will?

The NDP still has a chance to turn things around.  It can raise these issues every day in the House of Commons and across the land.   It must fight to make Canada a free and independent country.  It must demand that Canadian troops be withdrawn from Haiti and Afghanistan.  Public opinion would be solidly behind it if the NDP were to take the lead.     We can’t wait until more body bags show up on Canada’s shore.

Anything less and the NDP will soon be remembered as a feckless experiment in the misty past.