JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“It’s what the Chinese and Indians and Japanese and South Koreans and Malaysians and Indonesians and Filipinos and Vietnamese and all the others think of us that matters now.

“That’s where the growth is. That’s where we have to go. Even if the Pacific alternative is a much, much harder row to hoe.”

Yes, Mr. Ibbitson, that statement is very true so far as it goes, but in fact it doesn’t go very far.

I believe you are playing word games, being essentially dishonest while seeming to say true things.

Harper’s only “achievements” in widening our world trade has been to walk in lock-step with America, both in the pathetic little agreements with small states in Latin America and in joining the Pacific Rim effort.

Both of those efforts have more to do with America’s desire to lock-in these smaller states in geo-political terms than any meaningful extension of the world’s free trade.

Nothing of substance has been done by Harper concerning the world’s growing future giants: China, India, Brazil, and Russia.

Again, that failure relates to his servility towards the U.S., an imperial power which is very wary of closer relations with these countries and would not appreciate genuinely Canadian initiatives.

In fact, we have not had in my lifetime a prime who cares quite so much about what Americans think.

Indeed, in his words and actions, I think it completely fair to describe him as an American wannabe.

Yet he is your man, Mr. Ibbitson.

The basis for the rupture in American-Canadian relations, if it may be called that, is simple: Harper has been hit with the stunning truth so many leaders in the world have been hit with in the past: when you cozy up to the big bully to the South, giving him everything he wants and then some, you do not earn any reciprocity or special status.

In fact, you just keep getting asked for more. My favorite recent example is Tony Blair, a man who demeaned the office he occupied with lies and crimes serving American interests, and yet who was not even listened to on issues where he thought he could make a contribution to world affairs.

He became a pathetic figure, having money showered on him in his retirement (the way America tends to reward those who have served it acceptably), but having made no contribution to humanity worth mentioning and having served American interests with war crimes.

Harper has, along many lines, badly compromised the integrity of Canada’s traditional identity and role in the world while chasing the fantasy of becoming America’s favored son, a traditional identity which most American governments did not like but had some grudging respect for.

Now we look to American eyes as a rather pathetic figure, begging for pipelines, begging for inclusion in trade talks, begging for their honoring free-trade treaty terms which they have regularly violated when it suited their needs.

And we’ve compromised ourselves heavily, more or less cutting the attachments in the world that depended upon the perception of Canada as an honest broker, a fair-minded and progressive society reaching out to the world.

And we owe it all to your boy, Stephen Harper.

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JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

There is no surprise to thoughtful observers about Harper and Obama getting on.

It is only an apparent paradox, not a real one.

First, Obama has proven far more conservative than people thought, and indeed rather a political throwback of a president.

He keeps the killing machine and the secret prisons going just as the wretched Bush would have done, having upped the stakes in the pointless war in Afghanistan while initiating fairly large-scale killing of people in Pakistan, the last by remote control no less.

He also has not fought one significant battle for the things most people regard as true liberalism and democratic values.

Second, Harper simply grovels at the American alter, a worshiper of Old Glory if ever there was one, so what is the surprise at his cooperating warmly with anyone holding power there?

His entire political style and vocabulary seems to have been adopted from Republicans in Texas.

Last, it is simply inaccurate to speak of an open border.

What America wants, and Harper appears eager and ready to accommodate, is just moving the protected nature of the border to our perimeter – with Americans deciding the nature of the protection to be established there.

Hardly big thinking.

But then I suspect, Lawrence Martin, you reflect the fact, in your well-recognized role as a frequent apologist for the Liberal Party, that the unappetizing Ignatieff, former official spokesperson for the glories of American empire, is the Liberal Party’s pathetic appointed Leader, and who would doubt he is right on board with this dark business?