Remembrances

It’s interesting to read this morning that Harper has, after all, been flushed from cover, and is asking Israel for an explanation for the death of a Canadian major attached to the UN, rather than, as he has formerly, sweeping broken Canadian bones under the carpet.  The editor of The Globe and Mail has the temerity, however, to remind us to “Remember who is to blame” in today’s editorial.  Yes, let’s shall… with regard to this issue… who bombed the UN?  Hezbollah, or Israel?  Who, a fortnight ago, murdered a family of eight Canadian civilians nearly a hundred miles from the border where Hezbollah is operating — Hezbollah or Isreal?  For the editor of the Globe to state flatly that “Israel is doing its best not to kill civilians” is hogwash of the first order; clearly, at the moment, Israel could hardly care less who it bombs to burgers — one is forced to wonder if the editor of the Globe has even been reading his own paper lately.  We would do well not to take sides, but remain steadfast in our calls for a ceasefire.

I noticed this morning as well that the latest ship hired by Canada to haul our citizens our of Lebanon has left port with 49 Canadians aboard, out of a complement of several hundred people.  The balance?  Some Australians, but mostly, Americans.  Nothing wrong with this; I’m not complaining.  I simply make note of it for… shall we say… future reference.

Back to Harper.  Apparently he’s been opining in London on the glories of being a part of the British Empire.  While I’m proud of my personal and national heritage, I think it bodes ill for him to do this.  First of all, it doesn’t play well in Quebec… especially when he puts the survival of the French language and culture down to British largesse.  True, the British might easily have been more draconian about such things.  But the French culture survived first and foremost because French Canadians kept it alive, in spite of floating in an ever-growing continental sea of Anglo-Saxon voices and habits.  Secondly, not everyone in the Empire had the happy ride we had, and even though Harper acknowledges that, it’s still bound to rankle.  Finally, there’s the implication that Canada should abandon its own judgment and just go along with the happy gang of Anglosphere nations; just one more Merry Man in the band of some latter-day Robin Hood — completely ignoring that fact that such nations are, in fact, the rich who steal from the poor, and the Sheriff of Nottingham rolled into one — when evocations to “our traditional allies” (a phrase you will find glibly offered in the movie 1984) are steamed into the air.  Bluntly: we’re not part of an empire anymore.  We have our own choices to make.  They should be the right choices, not the expedient choices.  We should cooperate with the Anglosphere only insofar as it is right to do so, not to cynically maintain hegemony at the expense of the legitimate aspirations of others.