Nov. 24, 2006: Governor General in Africa & More

Governor-General a hit in Mali , Alexander Panetta, CP / Globe and Mail, Nov. 24, 06

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BAMAKO, MALI — [....] Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's speech to the Malian parliament [....]

“There is no governance without equality between men and women,” was the cover headline of L'Independant, quoting Ms. Jean. [....]

The response?

Malian MPs hear G-G pitch women's rights, CP / Globe and Mail, Nov. 24, 06

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Bamako, Mali -- ... uncomfortable grumbles and glances in Mali's parliament yesterday when Michaëlle Jean urged the African country to extend unprecedented rights to its women.

The handful of elected females beamed and cheered .... [some] male colleagues joined in the applause, while droves of others remained silent, exchanged stares or chattered among themselves for a moment. [....]

How long ago was this trip planned? By whom? For what government purpose? It seems to align more with the former government's priorities in (Liberal DFAIT) and with CIDA's goals in Africa than with what has been emanating from the current government.

Would what the GG says fall into the realm of political speech? At whose behest?

End Muslim stereotypes, Governor-General urges , Nov. 23, 06, Globe and Mail / CP

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Algiers -- Westerners should get rid of their stereotypes of Muslim women as meek and powerless, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean said yesterday as she lauded women in Islamic countries as "builders and doers." [....]

I believe Micaelle Jean should learn more before she speaks out, especially in Algeria or Mali. It seems as if Muslim women are no more liberated than they were a few years ago. At least some who have been in Algeria paint a different picture of the lives of women.



Jean begins 'dream' visit to Africa, Nov. 20, 06

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Jean speaks of Africa's bitter legacy of colonialism , CP / Globe and Mail, Nov. 20, 06
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Algiers, Algeria — Governor-General Michaëlle Jean has drawn attention to the bitter legacy of European colonialism in Africa.

I'm a little tired of those who like to see themselves as among the "victimized", harkening back to other centuries, whether blacks or natives or other groups who have found it in some way satisfactory to maintain their images of victimhood. Haiti was the first island to eliminate slavery in the Caribbean, only to descend rapidly into a black dictatorship and it is, from what I can tell, just about a world basket case.

Michaelle Jean is very fortunate to have been able to flee somehow to Canada with her parents. As for the harm done by European colonial powers, is most of Africa better off today under the rule of Africa's own thuggish military dictators, powerful tribal chiefs, often leaders helped by outside money and arms? The citizen and the traveller were safer under colonial rule than they are today, in many cases. Think of South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda ... and others.

All European, Western and African powers have grown in some way, some in realizing the wrongs of slavery and choosing to end it; others have chosen the sword, the machete or the gun and to fight neighbours and other tribes (e.g. Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Sudan). Then there is South Africa where the arsenal of weapons includes car-jackings and AIDS afflicted ignorant thugs raping children for "the cure". Incidentally, people are always enslaved by something or someone, in my opinion. It may be less evident or less brutal but slavery to the system is part of living, it appears.

Let's set the record straight; African slave traders and Arab slave traders played a large part in slavery within Africa and without, selling slaves to any slaver or shipper with money to buy slaves for the New World and its plantations. Those involved included white, black, dusky and every shade in between. Mali and Mauritania still have slaves. Mali did state last year that they were going to end slavery. Has it happened? Did the GG mention that?

Algeria enslaves people. Certainly women are not liberated almost anywhere except where there has been enough money in the family to afford an education in Europe or America. Does Ms. Jean really think the legacy will be any better when the businessmen salivating to get African minerals and whatever else is of interest to foreign powers succeed? (Think of China's designs, for example, or the businessmen / charitable foundations / rich individuals setting up businesses and cell phone services to "help" the poor.) Frankly, Michaelle, you wouldn't want to live under them, either.

In a speech at a luncheon given by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Ms. Jean spoke of her deeply personal attachment to Africa as a black, Haitian-born woman.

“My ancestors were torn from their lives,” she told a diplomatic audience.

Dear Michaelle, very dramatic you sound, as befits a CBC-trained performer who has learned to wrench the emotion from a scene, a speech, or an anecdote. You have not really suffered enough for what you say, and the reality of slavery for you is only in your imagination. Those of us with ancestors who were closer to the gutter than to the GG's mansion may know of a similar story but fail to be able to wring victimhood out of it. Our ancestors, most of them, landed on these shores after being enslaved by upper class landowners or some other lowly circumstance ... for example, from a potato patch, peat bog, or a mean hut or crofter's cottage. If our ancestors had been thriving, we would still be living on the auld sod ... but they left for greener pastures.

People like me, lucky enough to live in the West, do not pine for an ancestral language nor a heritage culture. That is the kind of thing people who are after taxpayers' money moan about ... in an attempt to induce guilt in the rest of us, I think ... all the better to get on the taxpayer teat. In fact when we do look back, we see mostly the brutal face of our ancestors and the people around them. We have moved on, in the current argot, and you should too. The victimhood whinge ill becomes such a fashion plate travelling at taxpayer expense and luxury. You won't be stopped at a border crossing by a man pretending to be a policeman or a man trying to get you in to visit his "family" for ... whatever.

I cannot wallow in sentiment for a period when ancestral immigrants--even dirty white ones--and dogs were unwanted, or for that time when they were practically indentured servants to farmers on remote acreage after they had survived the perils of the passage. Everyone worked brutally long days hacking out a living and eventually, a rude home, working for many more hours than we do today, whatever we do. They were rough as cobs, mostly ignorant, unschooled, close to brutes in their lives and relationships with their partners. It was the way it was. Nevertheless, their progeny did better, learned a bit more, strove for better lives and begat more and more with higher and higher aspirations. You, Ms. Jean, have been fortunate in your brains, beauty, education, your work with the CBC--well paid by taxpayers--your Liberal political ties, your currently needed colouring as a symbol of ... whatever, your speaking the only language that matters currently in Canada and for the last 30+ years ... You have lucked in far more than the descendants of, for example, the peat bog where they learned the art of the lower end work in making scotch whisky or pounded metal at the forge and the women grew old while still young in years; such were the burdens of being working women, working just to keep everything together in the home and with children.

I fail to see how you can take the sufferings of distant ancestors so much to heart when your own life has been so fortunate -- education, travel and more. Really. Stop blaming people who lived long ago, and lived by the code of the era, including plantations and slavery. They or their descendants learned eventually, then ended it, mostly because of a Judeo Christian faith which taught the equality of man.

Many descendants of a later slavery than Haiti's have done very well. They are too busy living their lives to make speeches full of what must be faux emotion about a place of ancestors from a couple of hundred years ago, a place Jean had no reason to see, really. Is that a failure of empathy on my part? Undoubtedly ... and for what seem to me to be sensible reasons. I don't see Condi Rice emoting about slavery all over the place. She is too busy being a VIP with brains, beauty, talent, an important job and the sense to know faux emotion to play the race/slavery card doesn't really play well, except to rubes ... when you have her assets. Michaelle, you do have assets and tremendous good fortune ... the right friend in the PMO at the right time. Count your blessings.

“(They were) stripped of themselves, of their language, their name, their memory, their history, of their basic dignity as women and men, and were reduced to slavery and deported to the Americas.”

[....] Earlier in the day, Ms. Jean laid a wreath at a martyr's sanctuary in honour of Algerians killed in the lengthy struggle to overthrow French colonial rule.

What is a martyr in the context of that war? Details, details, details missing. I believe the evil perpetrated on both sides would make Abu Ghraib look like a kindergarten class. Why, if the Algerians were treated so badly, do so so many of them head to France ... Quebec? Canada, even Judeo-Christian Canada? ... Well, what little there is left of religion after the social engineering to render Judeo-Christianity the only belief system(s) that may be mocked with impunity.

She was given a tour of the nearby Moudjahid museum. Its halls were filled with pictures of slaughtered Algerians from the anti-French uprising and with artifacts from the revolution that resulted in Algeria's independence in 1962.

Is all that a little abasement from the West ... for the good of the businesses to follow?

It sounds like a trip designed to point out the evil of whites, white slavers and white colonists. See above. Get over it. Stop wringing the subject for some advantage ... whatever it may turn out to be. Don't act out what amounts to apologies about past actions for this white and a number of others like me. We had nothing to do with it.

[....] Ms. Jean listed ways that Canada is helping the country rebuild. They include constructing power plants and water systems, and helping to build a Grand Mosque in Algiers. [....]

Why are Canadian taxpayers helping to build a Grand Mosque in Algiers? Is that through CIDA? Are the power plants and water systems a business venture ... maybe SNC Lavalin? Was the GG's visit a Liberal-scripted one? See below.



Comments


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If the GG wishes to discover her roots she should pay her own...

The Governor-General needs to be told that her role is purely...

27. [s**** a****] from Welland, Ontario, Canada writes: The Governor-General needs to be told that her role is purely ceremonial and that she is not to indulge in political commentary on behalf of the Canadian people. Only parliament and elected officials can deliver 'sermons' about foreign policy or domestic affairs. Either Jean is ignorant of her place in the political landscape, or she deliberately choses to usurp powers and privileges that are not that of the G-G. ....

Given the negative press about decisions and the CRTC, obviously not to the liking of the BCE / Globe and Mail news nor to the CanWest / National Post news sources, see if the GG and the mainstream media seem to be on the same page.

The Governor General could have been politicking for the left / Liberal / UNESCO Cultural Diversity Protocol -- signed Nov. 2005 by Paul Martin. Scroll down this for more information on the many implications and global network pushing for ratification of this.


First, the mainstream media news, then a little Memory Lane

Cable sector slams network fee idea , Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail, Nov. 23, 06

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A proposal by Canada's major broadcasters to begin charging for their signal “would be devastating” to the television industry, the country's cable and satellite companies argue.

With the TV sector next week heading into its first federal policy review since the 1990s, cable and satellite carriers are trying to stop the proposal, led by Global Television and supported by CTV and CITY-TV.

Global parent CanWest Global Communications Corp. is expected to argue next week at hearings held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that fees for carriage, as they are known, should be extended to the major networks.

Only specialty cable channels — those higher up on the dial such as Showcase, MuchMusic and HGTV — are allowed to charge carriers for their signals. [....]

Search: Rogers , a tax on television by the networks



Memory Lane

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Jan. 29, 2006

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2006_01_29_frosthitstherhubarb_archive.html

I ran out of time but these are a few items I spied that have current relevance.

Note: International Fund for Cultural Diversity , protect , preserve cultural expressions , France , China , US , CRTC , digital radio , must [repeatedly] , control , Departments of Industry and Canadian Heritage , French language , "Aboriginal, Chinese, German, Italian and South Asian communities" , CRTC approves four new Toronto radio stations , relationship created with Le Réseau Francophone de l'Amerique (RFA). , VOIP , disruptive technology , The Internet has always been a model of freedom. , tollgates, express lanes, and traffic tie-ups

No Indoctrination 4: Francophone Countries Gain
WTO alliances and groups in Hong Kong

No Indoctrination 5: Summit's Outcome Important for Islamic Countries
How to get around the WTO's "most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment" would allow exclusion of Israel ... (possibly the US?), I should think.

Focus on 10-Year Action Plan
empowerment of women was on top
How very interesting that the Canadian Ministry of Heritage and responsible for the Status of Women would have been supporting a liason with this group's view of women's place........ all through a UNESCO protocol.

February 1, 2006
Another Gift that Keeps on Giving -- CRTC & Lib. Big Brother, Daycare Myths, Tsunami $$$ -&- GG's Royal Taste
CRTC: subscription radio services -- heavily into control ... control ... not the freedom of the individual to choose
CIDA & the UN
$425-million was to have been administered by CIDA
failed Francoscenie production of L'echo d'un peuple
Liberal payments to the arts, including taxpayers' money for travel abroad
The Department of Foreign Affairs budgeted for international touring;
Chavez dreams of a continental shift
a socialist revolution sweeping through Latin America
January 30, 2006
No Indoctrination -&- Six Features of Socialism
No Indoctrination: One
according to CBC's (Evan Solomon and Carol MacNeil, Jan. 26, 06) program, the comedy programs are going to go after the Conservatives, and it sounds as though it will be merciless
The CRTC's willing stooges
a classic cartel, hiding behind a trade barrier
No Indoctrination: Two
Why would Elections Canada allow the use official ballots? [student indoctrination?]

The UNESCO protocol on Cultural Diversity is adhered to by mainstream media, artists and artists' unions, some, if not all telephone companies (quebectel) and many more. They have a vested interest in seeing that a Liberal government be returned to power, in order that this be used to maintain their pre-eminent positions. This is one reason why it is worth checking further.

No Indoctrination: Three
Quebec citizenship
Aboriginal nation rights
No Indoctrination: Four