"You are an idiot". "You acted like an idiot in a particular instance". They are 2 different concepts. One is what you are. Always. One is how you acted in a particular instance. Casper is an idiot. It's what he is. You act like an idiot sometimes, but I don't think you're an idiot overall. Capiche?
How would GUESSER of reacted
+28
Taking it in: Then-Vice President Dick Cheney rests his feet on his desk as he watches a live TV news report of the 9/11 attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001. The first plane hit the WTC's North Tower at 8.46am. A second jet struck the South Tower at 9.03am
+28
Shocked: With his glasses off, Cheney stares to his left after he was frog-marched by agents to a secure basement in the White House
+28
+28
Crisis: : The never-before-seen images capture Cheney's reaction to the attacks, which saw four hijacked passenger planes crash in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Above, the then-Vice President holds his head (left) and takes a call (right)
+28
Aftermath: Cheney, now 78, leans backward and yawns in one of the photos, released following a Freedom of Information Act request
+28
Tense talks: In the images, Bush (far right) looks tense as he confers with Cheney (far left), Chief of Staff Andrew Card (second left), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (center) and other officials in the President's Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)
+28
Emergency response: The PEOC is a secure underground bunker below the White House's East Wing that can withstand nuclear hits
+28
Frustration: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, the then Secretary of State, in the President's Emergency Operations Center in Washington in the hours after the attacks
+28
In charge: On the day of the attacks, Cheney was in charge at the White House. The President was visiting a school in Sarasota, Florida
+28
Advice: Cheney holds his hand to chin as his top lawyer, David Addington (seen kneeling), starts to secure the legal authority response
+28
Looking worried: Rice bites her lip as she sits beside Cheney in the PEOC. While the officials were inside the underground bunker, first built for President Franklin Roosevelt in World War Two, there were reports of more hijacked planes heading toward the White House
+28
Preparation: Bush speaks to Cheney, Rice and Card as he prepares address the nation about the day's atrocities, seen across the world
+28
Top officials: Cheney speaks to Bush in the PEOC on the evening of the attacks. Bush arrived at the bunker at around 7pm, it is reported
+28
Spouse: Cheney’s wife, Lynne (left), was also brought to PEOC for security reasons. She and her husband were later flown to safety
+28
Secure room: Cheney, his wife and then-First Lady Laura Bush (center) all look visibly tense as they stand in the PEOC during the crisis
+28
Never-before-seen: The striking pictures of Cheney and other officials' reactions to 9/11 were captured by Cheny's staff photographer
.
+28
Communications: Cheney (pictured speaking on the phone on the day of the attacks) has defended the harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the wake of the attacks, which included the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times
+28
Ready to speak: Bush is pictured clutching a piece of paper as he speaks to Card, Cheney and Rice ahead of his address to the nation
+28
Reassuring the nation: During his address, Bush promised to 'find those responsible and bring them to justice' for committing the 'evil, despicable acts of terror'. Above, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet is pictured watching the speech at around 8:30pm
+28
Listening: Tenet (left) and FBI Director Robert Mueller were joined by other officials as they watched Bush address millions of citizens
+28
+28
Flown to safety: That evening, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, were flown via helicopter to a secret destination, revealed in the photos to be Camp David. Above, the couple are pictured (left) being escorted to Marine Two, which shortly took off for Camp David (right)
+28
Bigger plan: Cheney's move was part of a Secret Service plan to maintain the continuity of the leadership of the government, PBS reports
+28
En-route: Cheney and his wife (seen in the aircraft) were later moved to other undisclosed sites as rescue workers looked for victims
+28
Safe place: The then-Vice President is greeted by a sailor at Camp David, situated in wooded hills about 62 miles from Washington, D.C.
+28
Horrified: Cheney (pictured at Camp David) said in the aftermath of the devastating attacks: 'We have to work the dark side, if you will'
+28
On September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger planes crashed into two World Trade Center towers (pictured) in New York, another jet struck the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The attacks killed a total of 2,996 people, including the 19 hijackers
+28
Shocking news: This photo, later seen by people across the world, shows the moment Bush was informed of 9/11 by his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, who whispered in his ear. At the time, the then-President was attending a school reading event in Sarasota, Florida
.
+28
Taking it in: Then-Vice President Dick Cheney rests his feet on his desk as he watches a live TV news report of the 9/11 attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001. The first plane hit the WTC's North Tower at 8.46am. A second jet struck the South Tower at 9.03am
+28
Shocked: With his glasses off, Cheney stares to his left after he was frog-marched by agents to a secure basement in the White House
+28
+28
Crisis: : The never-before-seen images capture Cheney's reaction to the attacks, which saw four hijacked passenger planes crash in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Above, the then-Vice President holds his head (left) and takes a call (right)
+28
Aftermath: Cheney, now 78, leans backward and yawns in one of the photos, released following a Freedom of Information Act request
+28
Tense talks: In the images, Bush (far right) looks tense as he confers with Cheney (far left), Chief of Staff Andrew Card (second left), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (center) and other officials in the President's Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)
+28
Emergency response: The PEOC is a secure underground bunker below the White House's East Wing that can withstand nuclear hits
+28
Frustration: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, the then Secretary of State, in the President's Emergency Operations Center in Washington in the hours after the attacks
+28
In charge: On the day of the attacks, Cheney was in charge at the White House. The President was visiting a school in Sarasota, Florida
+28
Advice: Cheney holds his hand to chin as his top lawyer, David Addington (seen kneeling), starts to secure the legal authority response
+28
Looking worried: Rice bites her lip as she sits beside Cheney in the PEOC. While the officials were inside the underground bunker, first built for President Franklin Roosevelt in World War Two, there were reports of more hijacked planes heading toward the White House
+28
Preparation: Bush speaks to Cheney, Rice and Card as he prepares address the nation about the day's atrocities, seen across the world
+28
Top officials: Cheney speaks to Bush in the PEOC on the evening of the attacks. Bush arrived at the bunker at around 7pm, it is reported
+28
Spouse: Cheney’s wife, Lynne (left), was also brought to PEOC for security reasons. She and her husband were later flown to safety
+28
Secure room: Cheney, his wife and then-First Lady Laura Bush (center) all look visibly tense as they stand in the PEOC during the crisis
+28
Never-before-seen: The striking pictures of Cheney and other officials' reactions to 9/11 were captured by Cheny's staff photographer
.
+28
Communications: Cheney (pictured speaking on the phone on the day of the attacks) has defended the harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the wake of the attacks, which included the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times
+28
Ready to speak: Bush is pictured clutching a piece of paper as he speaks to Card, Cheney and Rice ahead of his address to the nation
+28
Reassuring the nation: During his address, Bush promised to 'find those responsible and bring them to justice' for committing the 'evil, despicable acts of terror'. Above, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet is pictured watching the speech at around 8:30pm
+28
Listening: Tenet (left) and FBI Director Robert Mueller were joined by other officials as they watched Bush address millions of citizens
+28
+28
Flown to safety: That evening, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, were flown via helicopter to a secret destination, revealed in the photos to be Camp David. Above, the couple are pictured (left) being escorted to Marine Two, which shortly took off for Camp David (right)
+28
Bigger plan: Cheney's move was part of a Secret Service plan to maintain the continuity of the leadership of the government, PBS reports
+28
En-route: Cheney and his wife (seen in the aircraft) were later moved to other undisclosed sites as rescue workers looked for victims
+28
Safe place: The then-Vice President is greeted by a sailor at Camp David, situated in wooded hills about 62 miles from Washington, D.C.
+28
Horrified: Cheney (pictured at Camp David) said in the aftermath of the devastating attacks: 'We have to work the dark side, if you will'
+28
On September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger planes crashed into two World Trade Center towers (pictured) in New York, another jet struck the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The attacks killed a total of 2,996 people, including the 19 hijackers
+28
Shocking news: This photo, later seen by people across the world, shows the moment Bush was informed of 9/11 by his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, who whispered in his ear. At the time, the then-President was attending a school reading event in Sarasota, Florida
.
Well yeah, but in no way on 9/11 did Bush cower on 9/11. He did exactly what he should do in an unpleasant, developing situation in a roomfull of children. All he had at the moment the planes hit were the same as you and I, shock and horror. After that they did all they cold, turning a classroom into a situation room. He then went to DC to address the nation. Then to NYC with a bullhorn. Then to Afghanistan. There was nothing else he could have, or should have done. Attacking Bush for his actions on 9/11 is unfathomable.
Canada imposes travel restrictions:
[h=2]New entry requirement now in effect[/h]Visa-exempt foreign nationals are expected to have an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) to fly to or transit through Canada. Exceptions include U.S. citizens, and travellers with a valid Canadian visa. Canadian citizens, including dual citizens, and Canadian permanent residents cannot apply for aneTA.
Note: Until September 29, 2016, travellers who do not have an eTA can board their flight, as long as they have appropriate travel documents, such as a valid passport. During this leniency period, border services officers can let travellers arriving without an eTA into the country, as long as they meet theother requirements to enter Canada. Find answers to your questions about the leniency period.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/
------------------------------------
don't they know that's hurtful and racists?
this thread is has stupid as "Obamacare critics eating crow" and thanking the racist lying POS POTUS for creating a great economy
they're that guy, collectively clueless
[h=2]New entry requirement now in effect[/h]Visa-exempt foreign nationals are expected to have an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) to fly to or transit through Canada. Exceptions include U.S. citizens, and travellers with a valid Canadian visa. Canadian citizens, including dual citizens, and Canadian permanent residents cannot apply for aneTA.
Note: Until September 29, 2016, travellers who do not have an eTA can board their flight, as long as they have appropriate travel documents, such as a valid passport. During this leniency period, border services officers can let travellers arriving without an eTA into the country, as long as they meet theother requirements to enter Canada. Find answers to your questions about the leniency period.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/
------------------------------------
don't they know that's hurtful and racists?
this thread is has stupid as "Obamacare critics eating crow" and thanking the racist lying POS POTUS for creating a great economy
they're that guy, collectively clueless
These guys are uniformly wrong about everything. Literally, everything they talk about.
my .02 cents....not a penny more.......
Canada is an exporting commodity nation. That said , she's not a gas station like Russia. During times of high commodity prices it doesnt matter whom is running govt, red or blue, nearly impossible to fuck it up. The Liberals had a run of EIGHT consecutive years of budget surplus during the commodity boom (Mr Chretian). Now, when commodity prices slump, we need extra smart chaps in there.
Mr Harper took his lumps. To his credit in his last yr he somehow ran a surplus despite a gross slump in commodity prices. Despite this, Canadian citizens threw him out...:realtongu
Mr Trudeau plans on running 3 stright yrs of heavy budget deficits-- monetary stimulus.......he may get bailed if commodity prices continue to rebound AND foreign demand (growth ) is there. I think, MrTrudeau is WAY out of his league.....i hope he proves me the fool
I concur, but Obama and his minions obviously don't
i don't get that. This horrific incident was on US SOIL. I don't know where his line is. Kinda disturbing.
Negligent to not take measures. Common sense, no?
'Pres. Obama on not using phrase 'radical Islam': "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away."'
okay, and not taking significant measures to screen immigration avoids the problem?
Negligent to not take measures. Common sense, no?
'Pres. Obama on not using phrase 'radical Islam': "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away."'
okay, and not taking significant measures to screen immigration avoids the problem?
#TrudeauEulogies Trends on Twitter to Mock Canadian PM’s Praise of Castro
YAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty Images
by LUCAS NOLAN26 Nov 2016338
The hashtag #TrudeauEulogies is trending on Twitter, mocking Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s praising of Fidel Castro following the Cuban dictator’s death.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about Castro fondly, saying, “It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.”
Many were upset at Trudeau’s failure to mention that Castro was a dictator who forced gay people into internment camps, killed his political opposition, and was a socialist dictator who’s death has caused Cubans who fled his brutal regime to celebrate. Below are a few tweets in the currently trending hashtag #TrudeauEulogies that satirise Trudeau’s ignoring of the atrocities committed by tyrants like Castro.
Follow
Curtis @FowlCanuck
"Today we mourn painter and animal rights activist, Adolf Hitler. His death also highlights the need for suicide awareness"#TrudeauEulogies
2:17 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Mikhail Menuck @MischaMenuck
It is with a heavy heart that we mourn the passing of Saddam Hussein. His advancements in chemical research live on. #trudeaueulogies
12:59 PM - 26 Nov 2016 · Toronto, Ontario
Follow
Regulus de Leo @RegulusdeLeo
Jack the Ripper was a permanent influence on the lives of many economically deprived White Chapel women. #trudeaueulogies
2:51 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Deplorable Taxpayer @TheC0zmo
Kim Jong Il taught the people of North Korea that of they applied themselves, they, too, could eat . . . sometimes.#trudeaueulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
:missingte
386
by LUCAS NOLAN26 Nov 2016338
The hashtag #TrudeauEulogies is trending on Twitter, mocking Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s praising of Fidel Castro following the Cuban dictator’s death.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about Castro fondly, saying, “It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.”
Many were upset at Trudeau’s failure to mention that Castro was a dictator who forced gay people into internment camps, killed his political opposition, and was a socialist dictator who’s death has caused Cubans who fled his brutal regime to celebrate. Below are a few tweets in the currently trending hashtag #TrudeauEulogies that satirise Trudeau’s ignoring of the atrocities committed by tyrants like Castro.
Follow
Curtis @FowlCanuck"Today we mourn painter and animal rights activist, Adolf Hitler. His death also highlights the need for suicide awareness"#TrudeauEulogies
2:17 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Mikhail Menuck @MischaMenuckIt is with a heavy heart that we mourn the passing of Saddam Hussein. His advancements in chemical research live on. #trudeaueulogies
12:59 PM - 26 Nov 2016 · Toronto, Ontario
Follow
Regulus de Leo @RegulusdeLeoJack the Ripper was a permanent influence on the lives of many economically deprived White Chapel women. #trudeaueulogies
2:51 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Justicar @Integralmathyt
Lee Harvey Oswald was a man who wasn't afraid of taking a shot at shaking up the head of the political elite. #trudeaueulogies
2:46 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Justicar @IntegralmathytLee Harvey Oswald was a man who wasn't afraid of taking a shot at shaking up the head of the political elite. #trudeaueulogies
2:46 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Max Renn ?? @realMaxRenn
'While a controversial figure, Mao Zedong is remembered for promoting gender equality & improving education & healthcare' #trudeaueulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Max Renn ?? @realMaxRenn'While a controversial figure, Mao Zedong is remembered for promoting gender equality & improving education & healthcare' #trudeaueulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Renegade @RenegadeMinds
Ghengis Khan brought his culture and leadership to countless people. #TrudeauEulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Renegade @RenegadeMindsGhengis Khan brought his culture and leadership to countless people. #TrudeauEulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Follow
Deplorable Taxpayer @TheC0zmoKim Jong Il taught the people of North Korea that of they applied themselves, they, too, could eat . . . sometimes.#trudeaueulogies
3:20 PM - 26 Nov 2016
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
:missingte
http://www.macleans.ca/news/trudeaus-turn-from-cool-to-laughing-stock/
Trudeau’s turn from cool to laughing stock
Terry Glavin on how Justin Trudeau’s lament for the dictator Fidel Castro confirmed every lampoon of the prime minister’s foreign-policy vacuity
Terry Glavin
November 27, 2016
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Ever since his election as Canada’s Prime Minister last October, Justin Trudeau has revelled in global tributes, raves and swoons. He’s the Disney prince with the trippy dance moves, the groovy Haida tattoo and the gender-balanced cabinet. He’s the last best hope for globalization, the star attraction at the Pride parades, the hero of the Paris Climate Summit, the guy everyone wants a selfie with.
Trudeau made himself synonymous with Canada. He made Canada cool again. It was fun while it lasted.
By the early hours of Saturday morning, Havana time, Trudeau was an international laughingstock. Canada’s “brand,” so carefully constructed in Vogue photo essays and Economist magazine cover features, seemed to suddenly implode into a bonspiel of the vanities, with humiliating headlines streaming from the Washington Post to the Guardian, and from Huffington Post to USA Today.
RELATED: Trudeau’s trouble with rose-tinted diplomacy
It was Trudeau’s maudlin panegyric on the death of Fidel Castro that kicked it off, and there is a strangely operatic quality to the sequence of events that brings us to this juncture. When Trudeau made his public debut in fashionable society 16 years ago, with his “Je t’aime, papa!” encomium at the gala funeral of his father in Montreal, Fidel Castro himself was there among the celebrities, as an honorary pallbearer, lending a kind of radical frisson to the event. Now it’s all come full circle.
Times have changed, and the Trudeau family’s bonds with the Castro family, first cultivated while Pierre Trudeau was prime minister and carefully nurtured during the years that followed, now seem somehow unhygienic. Greasy, even. Definitely not cool.
“It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest-serving president,” Trudeau’s statement begins, going on to celebrate Castro as a “larger than life” personality who served his people. He was “a legendary revolutionary and orator” whose people loved him, and who worked wonders for Cuban education and health care.
A “controversial figure,” sure, but: “I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raúl Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”
And so, from far-off Antananarivo, Madagascar, where he was attending the 80-government gathering of La Francophonie, Trudeau’s lament for the last of the Cold War dictators ended up confirming every wicked caricature of his own vacuity and every lampoon of the Trudeau government’s foreign-policy lack of seriousness.
Twitter lit up with hilarious mockeries under the hashtag #trudeaueulogies. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wanted to know whether Trudeau’s statement came from a parody account. The impeccably liberal Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, called Trudeau’s praise of Castro “a sad statement for the leader of a democracy to make.”
MORE: #TrudeauEulogies trends after controversial Castro statement
Whether or not Trudeau saw any of this coming, he didn’t appear to notice that he was delivering a speech to La Francophonie delegates in Madagascar that emphasized justice for lesbian, gay and transgender people, while from the other side of his mouth he was praising the legacy of a caudillo who spent the first decade of his rule rounding up gay people for “re-education” in labour camps. Homosexuals were irredeemably bourgeois maricones and agents of imperialism, Castro once explained.
To be perfectly fair, Trudeau did allow that Castro was a “controversial figure,” and nothing in his remarks was as explicit as the minor classic in the genre of dictator-worship that his brother Alexandre composed for the Toronto Star 10 years ago. Alexandre described Castro as “something of a superman. . . an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.” As for the Cuban people: “They do occasionally complain, often as an adolescent might complain about a too strict and demanding father.”
This kind of Disco Generation stupidity about Castro has been commonplace in establishment circles in Canada since Pierre’s time, and neither Alexandre’s gringo-splaining nor Justin’s aptitude for eulogy are sufficient to gloss over the many things Cubans have every right to complain about.
Any political activity outside the Communist Party of Cuba is a criminal offence. Political dissent of any kind is a criminal offence. Dissidents are spied on, harassed and roughed up by the Castros’ neighbourhood vigilante committees. Freedom of movement is non-existent. Last year, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented 8,616 cases of politically motivated arbitrary arrest. For all our Prime Minister’s accolades about Cuba’s health care system, basic medicines are scarce to non-existent. For all the claims about high literacy rates, Cubans are allowed to read only what the Castro crime family allows.
Raul Castro’s son Alejandro is the regime’s intelligence chief. His son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, runs the Cuban military’s business operations, which now account for 60 per cent of the Cuban economy. The Castro regime owns and control the Cuban news media, which is adept at keeping Cubans in the dark. It wasn’t until 1999, for instance, that Cubans were permitted to know the details of Fidel’s family life: five sons they’d never heard of, all in their thirties.
Independent publications are classified as “enemy propaganda.” Citizen journalists are harassed and persecuted as American spies. Reporters Without Borders ranks Cuba at 171 out of 180 countries in press freedom, worse than Iran, worse than Saudi Arabia, worse than Zimbabwe.
So fine, let’s overlook the 5,600 Cubans Fidel Castro executed by firing squad, the 1,200 known to have been liquidated in extrajudicial murders, the tens of thousands dispatched to forced labour camps, or the fifth of the Cuban population that was either driven into the sea or fled the country in terror.
What is not so easy to overlook is that Fidel and Raúl Castro reneged on their promise of a return to constitutional democracy and early elections following the overthrow of the tyrant Fulgencio Batista. The Castros betrayed the revolutionary democrats and patriots who poured into Havana with them on that glorious January day in 1959. The Castros waged war on them in the Escambray Mountains until their final defeat in 1965, four full years after John F. Kennedy’s half-baked Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
After he solidified his base in Cuba’s Stalinist party–which had been allied with Batista, Castro’s apologists tend to conveniently forget, until the final months of 1958–Fidel Castro delivered Cuba to Moscow as a Soviet satrapy. He then pushed Russia to the brink of nuclear war with the United States in the terrifying 13-day Missile Crisis of 1962.
For all the parochial Canadian susceptibility to the propaganda myth that pits a shabby-bearded rebel in olive fatigues against the imperialist American hegemon, by the time he died on Friday night Castro was one of the richest men in Latin America. Ten years ago, when he was handing the presidency to Raúl, Forbes magazine calculated that Fidel’s personal wealth was already nearly a billion dollars.
In his twilight years, Castro was enjoying himself at his gaudy 30-hectare Punto Cero estate in Havana’s suburban Jaimanitas district, or occasionally retreating to his private yacht, or to his beachside house in Cayo Piedra, or to his house at La Caleta del Rosario with its private marina, or to his duck-hunting chalet at La Deseada.
Fidel Castro was not merely the “controversial figure” of Justin Trudeau’s encomium. He was first and foremost a traitor to the Cuban revolution. On that count alone, Castro’s death should not be mourned. It should be celebrated, loudly and happily.
==============================================================
Look at the spacing on that article SPAMMY. Isn't it beautiful?
Trudeau’s turn from cool to laughing stock
Terry Glavin on how Justin Trudeau’s lament for the dictator Fidel Castro confirmed every lampoon of the prime minister’s foreign-policy vacuity
Terry Glavin
November 27, 2016
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Ever since his election as Canada’s Prime Minister last October, Justin Trudeau has revelled in global tributes, raves and swoons. He’s the Disney prince with the trippy dance moves, the groovy Haida tattoo and the gender-balanced cabinet. He’s the last best hope for globalization, the star attraction at the Pride parades, the hero of the Paris Climate Summit, the guy everyone wants a selfie with.
Trudeau made himself synonymous with Canada. He made Canada cool again. It was fun while it lasted.
By the early hours of Saturday morning, Havana time, Trudeau was an international laughingstock. Canada’s “brand,” so carefully constructed in Vogue photo essays and Economist magazine cover features, seemed to suddenly implode into a bonspiel of the vanities, with humiliating headlines streaming from the Washington Post to the Guardian, and from Huffington Post to USA Today.
RELATED: Trudeau’s trouble with rose-tinted diplomacy
It was Trudeau’s maudlin panegyric on the death of Fidel Castro that kicked it off, and there is a strangely operatic quality to the sequence of events that brings us to this juncture. When Trudeau made his public debut in fashionable society 16 years ago, with his “Je t’aime, papa!” encomium at the gala funeral of his father in Montreal, Fidel Castro himself was there among the celebrities, as an honorary pallbearer, lending a kind of radical frisson to the event. Now it’s all come full circle.
Times have changed, and the Trudeau family’s bonds with the Castro family, first cultivated while Pierre Trudeau was prime minister and carefully nurtured during the years that followed, now seem somehow unhygienic. Greasy, even. Definitely not cool.
“It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest-serving president,” Trudeau’s statement begins, going on to celebrate Castro as a “larger than life” personality who served his people. He was “a legendary revolutionary and orator” whose people loved him, and who worked wonders for Cuban education and health care.
A “controversial figure,” sure, but: “I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raúl Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”
And so, from far-off Antananarivo, Madagascar, where he was attending the 80-government gathering of La Francophonie, Trudeau’s lament for the last of the Cold War dictators ended up confirming every wicked caricature of his own vacuity and every lampoon of the Trudeau government’s foreign-policy lack of seriousness.
Twitter lit up with hilarious mockeries under the hashtag #trudeaueulogies. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wanted to know whether Trudeau’s statement came from a parody account. The impeccably liberal Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, called Trudeau’s praise of Castro “a sad statement for the leader of a democracy to make.”
MORE: #TrudeauEulogies trends after controversial Castro statement
Whether or not Trudeau saw any of this coming, he didn’t appear to notice that he was delivering a speech to La Francophonie delegates in Madagascar that emphasized justice for lesbian, gay and transgender people, while from the other side of his mouth he was praising the legacy of a caudillo who spent the first decade of his rule rounding up gay people for “re-education” in labour camps. Homosexuals were irredeemably bourgeois maricones and agents of imperialism, Castro once explained.
To be perfectly fair, Trudeau did allow that Castro was a “controversial figure,” and nothing in his remarks was as explicit as the minor classic in the genre of dictator-worship that his brother Alexandre composed for the Toronto Star 10 years ago. Alexandre described Castro as “something of a superman. . . an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.” As for the Cuban people: “They do occasionally complain, often as an adolescent might complain about a too strict and demanding father.”
This kind of Disco Generation stupidity about Castro has been commonplace in establishment circles in Canada since Pierre’s time, and neither Alexandre’s gringo-splaining nor Justin’s aptitude for eulogy are sufficient to gloss over the many things Cubans have every right to complain about.
Any political activity outside the Communist Party of Cuba is a criminal offence. Political dissent of any kind is a criminal offence. Dissidents are spied on, harassed and roughed up by the Castros’ neighbourhood vigilante committees. Freedom of movement is non-existent. Last year, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented 8,616 cases of politically motivated arbitrary arrest. For all our Prime Minister’s accolades about Cuba’s health care system, basic medicines are scarce to non-existent. For all the claims about high literacy rates, Cubans are allowed to read only what the Castro crime family allows.
Raul Castro’s son Alejandro is the regime’s intelligence chief. His son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, runs the Cuban military’s business operations, which now account for 60 per cent of the Cuban economy. The Castro regime owns and control the Cuban news media, which is adept at keeping Cubans in the dark. It wasn’t until 1999, for instance, that Cubans were permitted to know the details of Fidel’s family life: five sons they’d never heard of, all in their thirties.
Independent publications are classified as “enemy propaganda.” Citizen journalists are harassed and persecuted as American spies. Reporters Without Borders ranks Cuba at 171 out of 180 countries in press freedom, worse than Iran, worse than Saudi Arabia, worse than Zimbabwe.
So fine, let’s overlook the 5,600 Cubans Fidel Castro executed by firing squad, the 1,200 known to have been liquidated in extrajudicial murders, the tens of thousands dispatched to forced labour camps, or the fifth of the Cuban population that was either driven into the sea or fled the country in terror.
What is not so easy to overlook is that Fidel and Raúl Castro reneged on their promise of a return to constitutional democracy and early elections following the overthrow of the tyrant Fulgencio Batista. The Castros betrayed the revolutionary democrats and patriots who poured into Havana with them on that glorious January day in 1959. The Castros waged war on them in the Escambray Mountains until their final defeat in 1965, four full years after John F. Kennedy’s half-baked Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
After he solidified his base in Cuba’s Stalinist party–which had been allied with Batista, Castro’s apologists tend to conveniently forget, until the final months of 1958–Fidel Castro delivered Cuba to Moscow as a Soviet satrapy. He then pushed Russia to the brink of nuclear war with the United States in the terrifying 13-day Missile Crisis of 1962.
For all the parochial Canadian susceptibility to the propaganda myth that pits a shabby-bearded rebel in olive fatigues against the imperialist American hegemon, by the time he died on Friday night Castro was one of the richest men in Latin America. Ten years ago, when he was handing the presidency to Raúl, Forbes magazine calculated that Fidel’s personal wealth was already nearly a billion dollars.
In his twilight years, Castro was enjoying himself at his gaudy 30-hectare Punto Cero estate in Havana’s suburban Jaimanitas district, or occasionally retreating to his private yacht, or to his beachside house in Cayo Piedra, or to his house at La Caleta del Rosario with its private marina, or to his duck-hunting chalet at La Deseada.
Fidel Castro was not merely the “controversial figure” of Justin Trudeau’s encomium. He was first and foremost a traitor to the Cuban revolution. On that count alone, Castro’s death should not be mourned. It should be celebrated, loudly and happily.
==============================================================
Look at the spacing on that article SPAMMY. Isn't it beautiful?
