Some Editorial Reflections

Although throughout most of my life I have been an inveterate writer of letters to the editor, I rarely write such missives anymore, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. However, I do read editorial letters daily, and often like to acknowledge the keen insights contained therein. 

What follows are some of those insights:

Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat suspend flights to Cuba, work to return travellers on island nation, feb. 11

Three people I  know in Toronto just cancelled their trips to Cuba. The reason they were given was a “shortage of fuel.” One of them said, almost casually, “It’s too bad my parents can’t go because of the fuel situation, while another one said, “Oh well, these things happen.”

The problem is not just a shortage of fuel. There is political strangulation that produces a fuel shortage. There are people making decisions that destroy livelihoods .

Cuba is being economically suffocated, and the people paying the price are not governments, but ordinary human beings: taxi drivers, hotel workers, musicians, café owners, guides, families who make their livings from tourism and human connection.

We are watching collective punishment.

It feels like we’re all in a school with a bully. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows what he’s doing. The rules exist. The charters exist. The teachers exist. And yet nothing happens. Not because no one sees it. But because everyone is afraid.

The bully is rich. He controls resources. He retaliates. He ignores norms. So the institution adapts. It stops enforcing rules and starts managing damage. Leadership becomes appeasement. Silence becomes strategy. This is how systems rot.

We are told to be calm. To be civil. To avoid anger. But there is something deeply corrupt about a world that demands politeness in the face of organized cruelty. Anger is not the problem. Moral numbness is.

Mary Y. Mouammar, Richmond Hill  

Do Republicans even know why they hate Canada?

Donald Trump threatens to block new Windsor-Detroit bridge, demands part ownership, Feb. 9

It is absolutely amazing how much U.S. President Donald Trump hates Canada. He is surrounded by a large group of sycophants who seem to hate everyone, with  Canada  at the top of the list. The problem is they react to things they do not understand, and they do not seem to look at facts. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is the subject of the latest stupidity. Canada paid for the bridge with Michigan’s co-operation and help in building it. That an American and a Canadian construction worker shook hands when both sides met in the middle  says it all, but the White House has no clue. 

Jack Hughes, Welland, ON

Tired of the insults, I’m no longer buying U.S. goods

As a senior living in southern Ontario, I have for years enjoyed the purchasing options of many U.S. branded products and services. I’ve purchased automobiles, major appliances, clothing, footwear, computers and  a wide range of American brands of food, home use cleaning chemicals, personal care items, lawn equipment and tools. I have also enjoyed  multiple  American-owned restaurant experiences. I’ve travelled south of the border and bought U.S.  entertainment  over the decades.

 Now I find myself  frustrated and tired of the ongoing insults from the current U.S. president claiming lack of respect and unfair treatment to America from Canada.

Now it’s time for me to move away from American products and  focus  on domestic  products and those  manufactured outside the U.S. — in countries that   value, appreciate and respect loyal customers.

Barry Brigham, London, ON

We could do more for Cuba 

I agree with the letter-writer who said she was happy to see that Mexico is offering some humanitarian aid to Cuba.

I would like to see Canada doing likewise. Is there any way that we can help Cuba with green energy? They have a great source of energy in sunlight, wind, and the ocean  to produce power on the island.

It puzzles me that the world stands by while a deranged president bullies the world into listening to his demands.

It breaks my heart that we are not doing more to help.

What has happened to Venezuela is unconscionable.

The Cubans are wonderful people and their island country is a good place to visit for those of us who love the sun, especially in the winter.

Lillian Shery, Toronto

While our government may have to be circumspect as it creeps around the mad king, it is clear that regular Canadians cannot and will not be silenced.

Some Pics From Bluesky

 I would say these capture the tenor of the times, eh?

Callousness Or Cowardice?

 

In my previous post, I spoke about Canada's strange silence regarding Cuba, despite its long relationship with the island nation. In today's Globe and Mail, a letter-writer addresses the issue: 

Double standard?

Re “Cuba loses its Canadian tourists” (Morning Update, Feb. 11): Mark Carney seems to understand international bullying. He calls for “a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.” So why is he silent so far about the U.S. attempt to strangle Cuba?

Mr. Carney says Canada should be principled and act consistently, “applying the same standards to allies and rivals.” That appears to be Canada’s position when it comes Greenland, but what about Cuba?

Mr. Carney specifically says we can’t “criticize economic intimidation from one direction, but stay silent when it comes from another.” So what about Cuba?

Mexico is not silent on Cuba’s situation, sending 800 tons of humanitarian aid. What about Canada?

Or are we just going to wait until we are the ones being economically terrorized by the bully?

Don McLean Hamilton

The only politician speaking out about the grave injustices Cuba is being subjected to is Don Davies, the interim leader of the federal NDP. And be sure to listen to Anita Anand's feckless non-response to him:

Canada's reaction to Trump's attempt at genocide is callous at best and cowardly at worst, and stands in sharp contrast to Mexico's. 

While Canada has many things to be proud of, this surely is not one of them.

Where Is Canada's Voice?

I am old enough to have seen much, and I am certainly a realist when it comes to politics. As Bismarck said,  it is "the art of the possible." That being said, I cannot shake the feeling that Canada should be doing much more in its responses to Donald Trump's genocidal insanity.

I begin with the premise that there will always be something that will set off the unhinged president, be it a television ad critical of tariff weapons, an exercise of foreign policy independence (Mr. Carney's trip to China), or the mere fact of trying to open a new bridge to Detroit. (The latter is in the news today, as Trump demands 50% ownership of the new Gordie Howe Bridge.

There is no appeasing a madman. And yet Canada continues with very, very muted responses to the mad king's outrages, perhaps still under the delusion that diplomacy has a chance. Two egregious examples demand immediate rectification. 

The first involves Kimberly Prost, a Canadian who sits as a judge on the International Criminal Court. She, along with others, was sanctioned by the U.S.in August of last year. 

The State Department says Judge Kimberly Prost, of Canada, was sanctioned for ruling to authorize the ICC's investigation into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the court "a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare against the United States and our close ally Israel" and said the U.S. has remained steadfast in its opposition to the ICC's "illegitimate judicial overreach."

An article today discusses what those sanctions mean for Prost. 

Her credit cards stopped working. A bank transfer to newlyweds in the U.K. has been stuck in limbo for months. She can’t travel to the U.S. — she was even disinvited from virtually attending a recent international law conference in New York.

And in a dystopian turn that could be pulled from a Ray Bradbury novel, her smart speaker no longer responds after Amazon cut off access: “Suddenly, Alexa wouldn’t talk to me.”

Prost is unbowed by these sanctions.

“These measures are completely futile because they certainly do not impact the way we do our jobs,” she said. “We continue with our work, we carry on, and we solely focus on objective and independent analysis of the evidence before us to reach our decisions.”

Compounding this grave injustice is the silence the Canadian government has chosen as its 'strategy' (although Anita Anand claims she raised the issue privately with American secretary of state Marco Rubio). 

Bob Rae, our former ambassador to the UN, was more forceful last summer, that is, until his wrists were slapped:

“The U.S. attack on the International Criminal Court and its judges is disgraceful,” Rae tweeted the day Prost was sanctioned. “Judge Kim Prost are [sic] carrying out their public duties. Attacks on them by Russia, Israel and the U.S. are intended to weaken and intimidate the international legal system.”

Rae, who left his ambassadorial post in November, quickly deleted the tweet. Government communications obtained by the Star, and first reported by online publication The Maple, suggest he was instructed to. “Getting my wings clipped,” Rae messaged a colleague that day. 

Who, or what, is served by such cowardice?

The second, even deadlier example is Trump's genocidal sanctions on Cuba, a country we have visited every year (except during the pandemic) since 2010. Trump, as you are likely aware, has threatened reprisal tariffs against any country that sends oil to that country. People will die as a result of this illegal edict, and it has devastated Cuba's tourism industry, one that relies heavily upon Canadian tourism for foreign currency.  Consequently, Air Canada has ceased flights to the island, as Havana warns it will no longer be able to refuel flights owing to the fuel shortage wrought by the embargo.

Personally, having much experience of a warm and gracious people both on and off the resorts, I feel terrible that the island is being condemned to such an unjust fate. Canada has always considered itself a friend to Cuba, having joint ventures there involving such fields as mining, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, etc. And yet again, absolute silence.

I understand that Canada is not about to start shipping oil to Cuba, but the very least it could do, in consultation and collaboration with Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is to speak out in the name of decency and sanity. Her country had been sending oil to the island, but has since stopped in the face of Trump's derangement. She, however, has at least spoken out to a degree about the situation.

Sheinbaum said at a public event in the northern state of Sonora that she did not discuss Cuban affairs in a phone conversation with Trump on Thursday. She added that her government seeks to “ diplomatically solve everything related to the oil shipments (to Cuba) for humanitarian reasons.”

Canada's silence on these issues is inexcusable. It is well and good to talk about national pride, but in order to cultivate and support it, our country must do much more than cower in the face of Trump's threats. 

A Tonic For The Times

A friend sent me this video. If you watch it in its entirety, I think you will find it a stirring reminder of some of the things that make Canada such a special place, a place we should all be grateful for and proud to call our home.

How's that as a tonic fpr the times that currently plague us?

The Cowardly Racist

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, and a book that I highly recommend, especially to Americans who deny their country's innate racism,  is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. The book tells the history of the migration of over six million Blacks from the Jim Crow south that took place from WW1 to 1970. While revolving primarily around three people, whose stories she renders in heartfelt detail, it is a stark reminder of the terrible prejudice, injustices, abuses and murders Black people have faced for so many years, realities that did not end with their emancipation.

All of which brings me to state the obvious: Donald Trump is a blatant, unapologetic racist who uses his Executive bully box to cultivate and inflame, not heal, the deep divisions within his country. The latest of many instances of Trump's vile nature is perhaps one of his most shocking - the depiction of the Obamas as apes. It is a depiction for which, typical of his cowardly nature, he offers no apology, 

Donald Trump said on Friday evening, after a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes had been posted to his social media account and then deleted, that he had directed aides to post the offensive video but that he hadn’t seen that portion of the clip and he refused to apologize for it.

The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Trump accepts no responsibility for this loud dog whistle sure to appeal to his MAGAT followers.

Although the White House initially defended the video in a statement from the press secretary, the video was later deleted and reporters were told that it had been posted, without the president’s knowledge, by an aide.

What led to the deletion? Apparently, a rare instance of a few Republicans showing a soupcon of spine as they joined with Democrats to condemn the deeply offensive post.

Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, the only Black Republican in the US Senate and a former contender for the party’s presidential nomination , posted on X: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

Earlier, Mike Lawler, the Republican congressman from New York, had posted: “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive – whether intentional or a mistake – and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

That spine was notably absent from Senate and Congressional leadership, however.

Neither of the top two Republicans in Congress, Thune and Mike Johnson, the House speaker, offered comment, prompting Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and the Senate minority leader, to post on X: “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent. This is dangerous and degrades our country – where are Senate Republicans?

In the Wizard of Oz, the cowardly lion finally found his courage. In this reality, however, neither the cowardly Trump nor his most ardent supporters have any desire to find theirs. 

 

 

 

 

Can We Show Some Spine?

The images emanating from the U.S. are something most of us never thought we would see. Masked government gunmen in the streets, tearing people out of their vehicles, demanding to see their papers, using battering rams to enter homes, and murdering people protesting their fascist ways. Such scenes must challenge even the most experienced denialist.

As a nation, we do not fall into that latter category, and yet there is a conspicuous absence of condemnation, even 'diplomatic' censure, from our government. While I realize it is always a fraught experience to deal with a fascist madman, surely it is time for our political representatives to show some spine.

That is indeed the opinion of Manitoba's premiere, Wab Kinew, one he expressed during the first ministers meeting last week.

Kinew says when he talks to his fellow Manitobans, they tell him how disturbed they are to watch the scenes from Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which has resulted in two deaths and rolling, often violent confrontations between citizens and agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.)

“I felt compelled at the table, just given how much I’ve heard about this from Manitobans,” Kinew told reporters after the meeting ended.

Kinew said he has called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and asked what he can do to help. Walz and other people in the midst of the turmoil have told Kinew they want people — yes, Canadians — to speak out against what they’re witnessing.

The premier is on side with that request and is hoping other political leaders are too.

Unfortunately, silence seems to be the strategy of most of the political class. 

... neither Mark Carney nor the other premiers made any statements about Minnesota. Kinew, who understands that they have to present a careful, united front in the face of Trump, especially with regard to trade, nonetheless hinted at some regret for the silence.

Kinew realizes what is at stake, especially with the CUSMA review pending, but he seems to have a moral clarity others are lacking. 

... we also have to call a spade a spade. We also have to look clearly into some things that are happening right next to us that are very unjust, and be able to say that we are going to continue being a voice of moral clarity that’s important for us as Canadians, so that we can hold our head high no matter what happens in our trade relationships with other countries.”

Heather McPherson, currently running for the leadership of the federal NDP, is also very concerned.

She wrote a letter to Carney this week, calling for sanctions on any Canadian connections to ICE, whether that is business or government, and the closure of ICE offices in this country. The ICE website lists five of them here: in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

“What Canadians are seeing south of the border, in Minnesota and beyond, is terrifying. The Trump administration’s abuses have no limits,” McPherson wrote in her letter. 

Now the pragmatist will say, "Keep your head down and carry on." Indeed, Trump has instilled deep fear in much of the world owing to his unhinged and brutal assault on what we once considered collective values. But perhaps the timid should keep in mind one basic fact: our traditional behaviour of creeping quietly around the elephant is no longer a viable strategy. With the mad king, one thing or another will always arouse his baleful, idish impulses. Confronting those impulses in a united way, as Europe did in his mad quest for Greenland, may be the only way to ultimately survive him.