What the hell is going on ?
Tuesday, December 4 2001
Posted by brockp

Here's another Brock rant for you all.

I saw the headline of the National Post this evening while driving about and doing my deliveries in the first snowfall to hit downtown Vancouver this year. While walking back to the van on E. Broadway, I passed one of those newspaper vending boxes at a bus stop. The headline read something like "US to deploy 6,400 troops along US-Canada border".

Without meaning to offend any American readers, what the Hell is that supposed to mean ? I don't want to hear any arguments about the world changing since such and such date and so on. I would just like someone, anyone, to explain to me what this is supposed to accomplish. Improved international relations ? Even better, I would like those of you who may be fuming at my words to imagine 6,400 Canadian national guardsmen (if such a thing even existed) being deployed to police area between Canada and the US. Imagine reading a headline on the NY Times which read "Canada to deploy 6,400 troops along Canada-US border". I suspect you may agree that will happen the same year the Montreal Expos win the world series. MM Hmmm.

Consider also that in olden times, massing military forces near a border usually meant you were about to launch an invasion. It reminds me of when I was a kid in elementary school and teenage bullies would grab the sissy bar of my bike and not allow me to ride home. I'm sorry, but to me it is a similarly useless act of aggression. I heard a guy called Ira Chemus on co-op radio giving a talk called "September 11th and the National Insecurity State" which proposed some interesting ideas about this stuff.

And how about the sign on the back of a bus I saw today ? A big American flag billowing in the wind, with the words "We Stand United" underneath. Does anyone else in Canada see this and wonder what that is supposed to mean ? Who paid for that ad ? If we are talking about US foreign policy I personally do not stand united and I wish our government would show a bit more spine. As a Canadian, I am disturbed (to say the least) to see such propaganda on this side of the border.

I am not a congressman or an MP or an MLA but I can see writing on the wall and things do not look good for the poor man in this world. To me, we are about twenty three days away from becoming a police state in Canada (see bills C-11, C-35, C-36). Merry Christmas indeed.