Who can better put a "kinder, gentler" face on the US-led
multinational empire than Canadians? After all, their country is the north star of liberal white Americans today, or so I have been told:
Often times, white people get frustrated with the state of their country. They do not like the President, or Congress, or the health care system, or the illegal status of Marijuana. Whenever they are presented with a situation that seems unreasonable to them, their first instinct is to threaten to move to Canada.
For example, if you are watching TV with white people and there is a piece on the news about that they do not agree with, they are likely to declare "ok, that's it, I'm moving to Canada."
Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly similar to the one they live in now.
Within white culture, it is agreed upon that if Canada had better weather it would be a perfect place.
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Note: Canadian white people threaten to move to Europe.
Note: Europeans are unable to threaten to move anywhere. ("#75 Threatening to Move to Canada," Stuff White People Like, 24 February 2008)
But it turns out Canadians, no slouches at internal colonialism, aren't very good at overseas imperialism. What does imperialism look like when it's undertaken by nice liberal multiculturalists?
Peter MacKay [Minister of National Defence] claims: "More than 80 per cent of Afghans have access to basic health care today" ("Speaking Notes for Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence," Government of Canada, 17 Oct. 2007).
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For our research, we were unable to obtain a list of CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] projects to tell us the specific location of projects in Afghanistan from either CIDA in Canada, or the Canadian embassy in Kabul. We happened to find two CIDA projects in Bamiyan province. Both were artificial insemination projects that appeared to be abandoned, or at best mothballed. These were the only evidence of CIDA projects we saw. At both sites, we found expensive vehicles and construction machinery left scattered about the sites in various stages of disrepair. (emphasis added, Michael Skinner, "Afghanistan: Why Canada Should Withdraw Its Troops," MRZine, 14 March 2008)
If American imperialism is a tragedy, Canadian imperialism is a tragicomedy.
2 comments:
Oh please tell me those are agriculture-related artificial insemination projects! Thanks for the laugh this morning. :-)
The idea that Canadian Imperialism is weak would deeply offend people throughout the Caribbean. Canada (through the Bank of Nova Scotia) decimated the economy of Trinidad over thirty years ago. Canada led and still leads the pillage of Haiti in overthrowing their government for being too self-respecting under Aristide, and Canada is the lead player in the on-going slaughter of Afghanistan.
Canadian imperial ventures are designed to look different than the US ones, while aspiring to the same goals absolutely. When Fidel's rag tag forces overthrew Batista, the Canadian government, so the history plays on the lying books, were the ones who said no to US designs to strangle the island. Not so, as it turns out. Canada was there acting as an internal spy and passing off information to the US.
The story goes on and long. Canada has recently bucked the world and taken a very pro-Israel line.
More could be said. But Canada is a big power broker and never does anything that is actually against the over-all line of US imperialism, putting Canada in a more dangerous role globally than either Germany or France (and with a much larger impact on global resources, in particular oil, gas and uranium).
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