Canada has always been overshadowed by its more gobby neighbour but somehow it has always managed to avoid being too closely entangled with the country it shared the top bit of North America with as the Americans decided there was not enough war in the world and decided to spend the last 200 years rectifying it.
Now it has become a target for terrorism after the Canadian military become involved as part of the American-led coalition currently bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
Things will now change now and it is assumed that the Parliament will adopt the paranoid fortressing techniques that already seal the White House and the Houses of Parliament into a bubble of concrete and steel.
That could be why Canada was chosen as a target, it was always the softest and easiest target of the allies but things in Canada will change now that it has been bought into the fold which could prove a watershed moment for the Canadian politicians who, if they are like the US and UK who were never ones to waste a crisis, will bring in sweeping 'anti-terror' laws.
Canadians can expect to hear lines such as 'if you got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' and 'everything to keep you safe' from the mouths of the government as their rights and privacy are chipped away.
6 comments:
So very true!And I did like your phrase about Canada's "gobby neighbour" - absolutely spot on. Canada will increasingly suffer what we and others who have a "special relationship"(what does that really mean) with the US the governmental and media paranoia. I am almost daily reminded of HL Mencken's famous comment: "The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed and, hence, clamourous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ISIS, Iran, Iraq, Ebola, Putin, airport security, Jimmy Saville............ . Just as the government of the early 19th century and parents up and down the land threatened their children that "the bogeyman" Napoleon would come to punish them if they were not good so we too today are kept in line by fear and the promise of retribution from evil people and places. As Orwell reminded us in 1984 the only response to this can be perpetual war and therefore war is peace!!!!!!
Not sure what Flight 103 has to do with this. We have since vilified, made friends with and then removed Gadaffi since then.
What Tony says about having to have a bogeyman is true, we need one to justify spending the many billions on the military each year and you can't do that if you don't have someone to worry us about them planning to kill us in our beds.
ISIS only became a threat when they crossed the border into Iraq, we were very content with them doing their nasty business in Syria.
I apologise, i thought that because your answer was nothing to do with what Tony said you didn't understand it.
Explain away but my 'Big Book of History' says that the downing of Flight 103 was retaliation for the two Libyan ships sunk and the two Libyan planes that the US shot down in the early 80s. Not so much Islamic terrorism as revenge.
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