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.