JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENT TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

America is well on its way to being a police state, and it is as this disturbing development occurs that our misguided government has opened us to the lack of privacy and the very different way of treating people which is the American way.

What other so-called democratic society sends men to be tortured abroad? What other democratic society has the secret police (the FBI) able to check up on what citizens have been reading? What other democratic society has such a huge portion of its people in prisons?

What other democratic society has been cited over and over for extreme police brutality by international organizations like Amnesty International? What other democratic society is carrying out a massive program of extrajudicial killings in at least six countries?

Our press goes on about leaders like Putin or Gaddafi, but America’s last president killed more innocent people than any of them, and its current one is working hard on the same goal despite his meaningless peace prize.

This agreement is a very saddening development, but then almost everything happening or being promised to happen under Harper is more than a little saddening.

A man with 39.6% of the vote is ripping apart Canadian institutions and traditions and blackening our international reputation as a decent society, busy aping the United States in many of its most backward works.

Talk about a democratic deficit: we have a very serious one and stand in need of genuine parliamentary election reform.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN BY JASON MYERS AND MARK MANTAIS IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Harmonizing” is such a pleasant, soft word.

What it really means in this context is allowing American goons into all ports and entry points in our country and allowing them a veto on how we handle our affairs.

So it’s an Orwellian use of political euphemism.

Why do I say American goons?

You’ve only to look at the Internet to find countless stories of the American border service treating people like scum.

I still vividly remember the last time I crossed the border, years ago, and watching this nasty little man with a sour face, a terrible personality, a big belly over his belt, and a gun on his hip seizing a banana from the lunch of a man crossing for the day in his car.

I heard the poor man exclaim sadly that it was part of the lunch his wife packed him, and I watched this thug in a uniform marching away with his prize seizure of a banana without an identifying sticker on it!

I later dealt with the same guard, and he was simply rude and ignorant.

Then there were the times when fire engines from Canadian border cities were crossing to assist towns on the American side but were held up for “security” concerns.

America is a paranoid land, and it produces an unusually large crop of mentally unstable people. Do we really want them controlling our borders?

I fear it’s a bit like the legends of what happens when you mistakenly let a vampire cross the threshold of your house.