LIVING WITH INSANITY
Harper, Abbott, and
Cameron at the Brisbane G-20
John Chuckman
Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is reported by a
spokesman, to have had the following exchange with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin
during the Brisbane G-20 summit: “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I
only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.” Putin is
said to have replied, “Impossible. Since we are not there.”
A graceless bit of diplomatic crudity from a truly graceless
man, Stephen Harper, someone Canadians know has a history of underhanded practices
at home, from introducing ugly personal-attack campaign advertising, using
secretive and bullying tactics in parliament, failing to deal with corrupt
practices by subordinates especially an American-style election scandal of robo-calls
which sent some voters to the wrong polls, to having appointed several
unbelievably incompetent and corrupt ministers. He is known for a ferocious
temper in private, a very controlling man who grants his political associates absolutely
no freedom of expression, and is reported by insiders as having on at least one
occasion thrown a chair in a meeting. His silencing of Canadian government scientists
from offering their opinions on issues in areas of expertise has been a
simmering international scandal, as has his complete suppression of
environmental issues.
Before Harper, Canada enjoyed for many decades a reputation
for fairness and decency and intelligence in international affair with
statesmanship and openness exhibited by figures like Lester Pearson or Jean
Chretien or Paul Martin. Harper has destroyed a great deal of that as he
pursues a single-minded role as American junior partner in almost all things.
He completely abandoned Canada’s traditional policies of
fairness and balance in the Middle East, literally shocking many Canadians at
times with fervent outbursts about Israel, including suggestions that Canadian critics
of Israel are anti-Semitic. He does this, as any astute political observer
recognizes, to solicit increased campaign funds from Canada’s financially
successful Jewish community, taking his cue from Republicans in the United
States such as Newt Gingrich who alone received $18 million dollars from one
wealthy supporter of Israel for his last nomination campaign in exchange for
inserting into his speeches that there was no such thing as a Palestinian, an
utterly insincere and ridiculous statement. Since Israel is no admirer of
President Putin’s, he being too independent-minded and opposed to the American
exceptionalism Israel tightly embraces and by which it prospers, this activity
of Harper’s puts him in an anti-Russian frame of mind from the start.
Harper has made an annual photo-op journey to Canada’s
North, always trying to appear to voters as the man most concerned with a
future there of melting ice creating free access through the Northwest Passage.
Ironically, he periodically mentions Russia as the nation he is most concerned
about, but Canada’s recent history couldn’t make it clearer that it is the
United States which represents the great threat to our Northern waters and
shore. Everything from unauthorized American atomic submarine prowling to a
giant American oil tanker passing to published American charts showing this
future open water as international tells a pretty harsh story. But in every
detail, Harper only pretends America is a great and non-threatening
friend.
Harper is the single most obsessed leader in Canada’s
history with pleasing, almost fawning over, the United States. Had the history
of Canada, which included a great deal of disagreement and contention with the United
States over its many imperialistic behaviors, included many leaders of Harper’s
character, there quite likely would not be a county called Canada today.
So here are the demonstrated qualities of the man performing
as Canada’s diplomatic ass at the G-20 in Brisbane. He demonstrates a genuinely
anal-retentive temperament, is intolerant of differences of opinion, and embraces
a wilful blindness to the world’s greatest threat to peace, the United States
in its self-appointed role as imperial arbiter among nations.
In case you wonder why a man like Harper even holds office in
Canada, it is because the effective opposition was split with internal battles
and because the last leader they selected in desperation following those
battles was a man of no political intelligence or even experience and a totally
unattractive personality to the public, Michael Ignatieff, someone who managed
to do almost everything wrong. It also reflects a democratic deficit in our
parliamentary structure where a party with just over 39% of the vote can be a
parliamentary majority. So despite Canadians consistently being about 60% or
higher inclined to somewhat progressive parties, Harper has had a free run at
pole-axing the country’s traditional international reputation. Every day we
come to be seen as a bit more like the deceptive and brutal American colony in
the Middle East he embraces so closely.
We unfortunately live in a time utterly lacking statesmen in
the West. I don’t know the detailed backgrounds of those other aggressive fools
at the G-20, Abbott of Australia and Cameron of Britain, but I know they are
both men who have lied exceedingly and been intimately involved with such nasty
business as favors for the unsavory Rupert Murdoch empire. I can think of
nothing which recommends either of them as statesmen. Indeed, they both, quite
literally, kowtow to America.
Putin is head and shoulders above these men in intellect and
focus, readiness to communicate clear views to the world, someone demonstrating
considerable patience, and, from all evidence, someone notably free of the blowhard
ideology which virtually characterizes Harper, Abbott, and Cameron.
Putin’s moves in Ukraine seem to me appropriate for dealing
with a deliberately-induced crisis in an important neighboring country, and one
with a long history of connections and associations. He has not invaded
Ukraine, something which he could easily do were he so inclined. I suspect he
has supplied weapons to East Ukraine, but that is something the United States
does all the time, including supplying weapons to some of the most brutal groups
and governments on earth, as it is right now doing in Syria, with secret night
cargo flights out of Turkey to terrorist cutthroats. Just ask yourself what
America would do about a comparable situation in Mexico: patience simply would
not exist, and Mexico City would be quickly overrun by tanks.
The people of East Ukraine, Russian in background and sympathies,
deserve protection as much as they deserve the huge amounts of emergency
supplies Russia has supplied in a conflict owing its origin entirely to the
covert acts of America. Had the coup-established government of Ukraine
originally offered protection of Eastern interests, including language rights they
openly tried suppressing, the story might have been different, but they did
precisely the opposite, passing unfair laws, making threat after threat, and
attacking their own citizens. Who wouldn’t rebel in that environment, including
any of the states of the United States? How easily people forget past
rebellions in the United States, the greatest of which was the Civil War, still
the bloodiest war Americans ever experienced.
It is quite clear that the United States is responsible for
destabilizing Ukraine. Its CIA funds have been invested into many unsavoury
projects, perhaps most disturbing is its paying support to a collection of neo-Nazi
groups ranging from extremist parties to violent militia forces, some of the
very groups who have committed atrocities such as murdering many hundreds of civilians
and some of whom actually march under swastika-like flags. It does seem more
than a bit strange that men like Harper, Abbott, and Cameron implicitly support
that kind of filthy work while charging Putin with dark acts, dark acts which are
stated ambiguously and certainly never proved.
It is also clear that the United States has pressured all
authorities involved to delay and obscure the investigation into the
destruction of Flight MH17, and the only explanation for that can be America’s
preventing, for as long as possible while the new coup-created government of
Ukraine consolidates its position, the highly embarrassing finding that Ukraine
in fact shot it down. The United States has said over and over it has evidence
about the crash, yet it has never produced a scrap of it. Just as it never
produced evidence for so many past claims from what actually happened on 9/11
to the assassination of a President.
The great irony of the G-20 summit in Brisbane is that its
only substantial agreement concerned doing everything possible to promote growth
in a world whose economy is dangerously stagnating, yet it wasted time and
energy on America’s fantasy stories about Russia and Ukraine, insulted Russia’s
President, and threatened in some cases further growth-suppressing sanctions.
Nothing could be more contradictory and unproductive or, frankly, just plain
stupid.
