I made it to the rally. Those of you who know Calgary will recognize the C-train as the very best access to the city center. I climbed on at Canyon Meadows Station resplendent in my Made in Canada T and a Flames Ballcap. Round about Heritage Station this huge feller boards with a furled CanFlag. We make eye contact and a few nods are exchanged.
I disembark at Olympic Plaza and follow a Vet off the train and onto the platform. Ahead of us is an obviously disheveled native man who reeks of amonia. I increased my pace to get up wind of this pathetic soul. As I passed him, he turned and looked at me with eyes that said, "I quit." I moved on into the plaza infront of city hall as a quiet crowd assembled.
I thought I would observe.
What I saw has both broke my heart and gave me a glimmer of hope.
The turn out on what could only be described as a gorgeous Calgary fall afternoon was dismall.
By my estimation (I counted them) there were about 350 people in attendance...Pols included. The ones that did attend include Jason Kenny, Ted Mortinson, Wayne Cao, Rob Anders, and a few others from the blue-stripe that don't impress me much.
Noticeably adsent, were any Pols of the red or orange (yellow?) stripe. The big three were there too, Global, CTV, CBC. I have to admit, I felt really bad for the girrlll reporter from the CBC. The obvious, gratuitious bitch-slaps were taken at Mother Corp, and Taliban Jack. Some young gal sang an original song entitled, "Canadian Soldier."
I nearly cried... The Pols spoke out, Kenny and Mortinson being the best of the stripe.
The crowd (such as it was) consisted of mostly white, old/young, Canadians. I saw alot of guys with PPCLI T's. Obviously alot of the kids in the crowd were offspring of serving men. Then there were the Vets, about 15-20 of them.
Then we got to hear from an Afghani refuge named, Abduul, (no shit,) who spoke passionately about the reality of Taliban rule. He got the biggest cheer.
I stepped back from the rally to get a larger sense of what was really going on. What I saw does not bode well.
The bum on the park-bench, not the pissy one (this feller had moved on beyond that,) seemed annoyed at this intrusion into his space. He spooled up his backpack after trying to rub the crabs out of his arm-hair.
I jumped back on the train, and so did the feller with the flag. His stop was before mine.............we both avoided eye contact....but as he got off, it was unavoidable. We both shook our heads, and a little part of me died...
Then I got it, the juxtaposition. We live in a country that takes freedom, prosperity, and entitlement for granted. It's no fucking wonder, given the pricks running the show.
There is something desperately wrong with a country, a city, a province, a jurisdiction that can elicit the support of half a million people for a celebration of minority sexuality. The same country cannot find in it's soul to support the children that fight for Us.
I think we're fucked...
Syncro
4 comments:
"Noticeably adsent, were any Pols of the red or orange (yellow?) stripe. The big three were there too, Global, CTV, CBC. I have to admit, I felt really bad for the girrlll reporter from the CBC. The obvious, gratuitious bitch-slaps were taken at Mother Corp, and Taliban Jack."
Your insincerity is obvious. My father was a veteran and always made it clear that even a necessary war is a terrible waste. If you don't have the sense to accept that, fine.
Don't bother suggesting with your little remarks about "yellow" that Jack Layton or the rest of the NDP wants out of Afganistan because of cowardice. That's a fabrication on your part (I might add a genuinely cowardly fabrication), and you know it. But I guess it's typical of the overbearing, self-righteous arrogance of Calgary Conservatives, a trait they share with Toronto Liberals.
My wife and I attended the convention in Quebec City in September where the NDP adopted a policy of bringing our troops home from this action. We heard from
Malalai Joya, an Afgan MP who said that Canadian troops need to avoid supporting the warlords and others who are surrounding Karzai. For her troubles, she has received death threats from these people, some of them right in the Parliament chamber!
If you want to start looking for cowards, go look some place else. No one has to accept that kind of utterly dishonest smear tactic.
Budd
Thank you so much for noticing my insincerity.....although I prefer to think of it as scarcasm.
I agree that wars result in the waste of resources and lives....although at times are a necessary evil and I believe we are living in one of those times. If you can not understand this ....fine.
As far as assertions of cowardice....well when Jack announces his itinerary to open negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan I will gladly withdraw them. Until then the "usefull fool" rantings of Jack mark him as a gutless prick of the worst kind....one who knows he will never have to follow through. But then I guess that's a long standing tradition in the NDP.
In a different vein...I understand Quebec City is a beautiful, historic site to behold. I'm so sorry to hear you and your wife had to go there under such difficult circumstances. My deepest condolences.
I have no doubt that Ms. Joya was a passionate speaker....I would bet every bit as passionate as young Abdul who spoke at the Calgary Rally. Just as an aside...how many woman MP's sat in the Taliban version of the Afghan parliment? Think about it Budd, it's not a really big number.
As far as my propensity for being overbearing, self righteous and arrogant....well it's my blog and quite frankly Budd....I'm an asshole.
On the issue of smearing cowards...I find that invariably, they become covered in their own shit...I'de just rather not be standing next to one when it hits the fan.
Syncro
Speaking of the "war on terror"...
One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports. These "hijackers" somehow managed to board all four airliners with their tickets, yet not even ONE got his name on any of the flight manifests. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name, more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastical far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.
Get back on your meds enlightenment.
Syncro
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