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October
3, 2001
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Carl
Estabrook:
Stop Bush's Killing
Mahajan/Jensen:
Food,
Fear and War
Patrick
Cockburn:
Ready
to Strike
Cockburn/St.
Clair:
Things
Could Be Worse
Terry
Allen:
Early
Profit-taking and 9/11
September
29, 2001
Steve Perry:
The
Pentagon's Blueprint
Patrick
Cockburn:
When
Will the Missiles Fall?
September
28, 2001
Edward Said:
Backlash
and Backtrack
John Troyer:
When
Language Fails
Patrick
Cockburn:
In
Afghanistan, Waiting for the Real War to Start
Steve Breyman:
War,
Oil and Renewables
Resources:
100s of Links
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
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October
4, 2001
Sovereignty Ceded
to US
Canada's Melting Border
By Norman Madarasz
Canadians are known to display a strange
sense of national identity. Most of them bitterly contest the
right of one of its provinces--the nation of French Canadians,
Quebec--to gain its independence from what it views as an illegitimate
federation. English Canadians have at times gone as far as to
reject the very nature of the conquest of Nouvelle France, the
origins of Quebec. This may confirm the impression held by Europeans
that English North America is a continent lacking history. It
also covers up how many Canadians seem to desire nothing less
than affiliation to their southern neighbor. But at what cost?
The phoenix rising out of the
ashes of the World Trade Center is-at least in the minds of Canadians--a
new USA--Canada North American superstate based on more efficient
control of the continental perimeters. If one should believe
the latest poll published in the Globe and Mail on October 1,
then most Canadians want the Prime Minister to cede sovereignty
over the frontier. The famed "longest undefended border
in the world" is coming up short in containing the grief
felt by Canadians regarding the recent attacks of 9/11. As the
border thins, the grief typical to trauma victims is shaping
into guilt.
Does Canada
Really Exist?
English Canadians who have been abroad are aware of how much
Canada's real, sovereign existence is never really a given. Ask
an educated foreigner outside of the Anglo-American sphere what
degree of independence they perceive Canada as having, you will
be disappointed. Canadians may consider themselves as existing
as a sovereign people, but their arguments dissolve in the bathwater.
European philosophers used to flirt with fire in trying to found
God's existence on deductive inference alone. As they are now
compelled to cede even more of their sovereignty to the southern
neighbour, Canadians would do well to prove their own existence
on grounds other than mere faith.
When we are compelled to ask
the question about Canada's real existence, the best we usually
come up with is a series of "yes-but" rationalizations.
Canada and the USA share the same culture? Yes...but Canada imposes
quotas on national content. Canada and the USA were both founded
as nations through events stemming from the American War of Independence?
Yes-but, we were against, they were for. Canada and the USA have
both implemented and profited globally from the same unquestioned
Friedmanian capitalist economy? Yes...but, under one of our Prime
Ministers-now out of office and out of life-Canada was truly
a social democracy. Canada is the only country in the world to
have allowed the USA to place its border within its national
soil, i.e. our international airports? Yes...but, for efficiency's
sake, since crossborder trade has been the most prosperous in
the world since NAFTA--another defining moment for Canadian identity.
All in all, a fairly weak set
of premises on which to built any empowered argument proving
existence of identity, let alone sovereignty. Many years of huffing
and puffing about being different, multicultural and peaceful
all ended up in the infamous beer guzzling Molson "Canadian"
TV ad. Now under stress, fear and the warmongering of the eternal
tubular present, not to mention terrorist baiting by the southern
neighbor, Canadians want to liquidate their suffering by thinning
the border to a memory trace, something like the Mason-Dixon
line.
Led By the
Shielded
For decades, the Canadian vantage point has been to preach moderation
to the U.S. If Canada's line has not been entirely credible,
it is largely owing to the opportunism of our business class.
There's a general rule here: once the Yankee guns yield to cease-fire,
the Canucks flock in for the business catch. Understandably shocked,
if not terrorized by the attacks of 9/11, Canadians are choosing
to bow their heads and kow-tow to the US line of civil repression,
a new and improved McCarthyism already in the planning before
the attacks.
Furthermore, merely a year
after bringing the Liberal Party back into power, Canadians have
realized that they voted for the illusion of a leader whose size
has deflated with the e-bubble of the stock exchanges. Opting
for guilt when suffering grief besets a mind unwilling and unable
to explain. As for our neighbours, it's not that American citizens
lack basic geopolitical knowledge--they have shielded themselves
from it.
Now Canadians are asking them
for repentance through the bad faith of vaguely understanding
that there are facts to consider behind the events. In the meantime,
the friendliest border is turning into the thinnest string on
which a twisted narrative can hang--one without history, let
alone accountability. CP
Norman Madarasz is a scholar and translator, based
in Montreal and Rio de Janeiro.
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